We consume, therefore we are

As we inch our way towards the 2014 polls, some commentators seem to hear the roar of a beast that has so far been somnolent. The Indian middle class, so it is being said, is awakening; political parties long used to pitching their tents in the village will now have to seek the affections of a vociferous middle class whose collective voice demands to be heard.

Judging by its growing numbers, certainly the urban middle class is a sizable constituency; within a decade it will constitute a quarter of India’s population. Its economic power, measured in terms of its power to consume, fires the economy. The sound of footfalls in malls and showrooms across the country’s old and new urban spaces is sweet music not just to manufacturers, business analysts but to policymakers who pin their hopes for an economic revival on a sustainable acquisitive frenzy.

So it is hardly surprising that the leading personalities of both political formations, the UPA and BJP, should woo the middle class. The Gujarat “model” may appear a rival to the UPA model, but in its evolution, operation and outcomes it is a localised version of the national economic discourse. It has been more smoothly implemented for obvious reasons. It has been subjected to far fewer contesting pulls and pressures that have turned the national experiment for growth so much more a protracted one.

Being the main beneficiary of an identical political-economic dispensation from New Delhi and from Gandhinagar, what can the middle class roar about? It will shout for better, that is stronger statecraft, more leeway for its aspirations and ambitions through more reforms, greater growth. It will clamour for a more efficient implementation of the compact that had been built in the first decade of growth. In that compact, policymaking reflected a commitment to greater play for private enterprise, a pullback of statecraft from economic enterprise and to strong pristine governance.

That is precisely what the two main political formations will put on offer. The elections will not be the site for a contest between conflicting visions of economic and political discourse. It will be about which formation is better able to reinforce that compact between an acquisitive middle class -- with fixed ideas about the way our political life and economic agenda can become more “modern” – and the state.

That compact between the government of the day and middle-class India rests on, flows from, the whole-hearted acceptance of two belief systems: One is the nineteenth century idea of progress and the other is the equally old idea of statecraft. For most Indians, progress is no more than economic growth realised through individual ambition and drive and rational purpose.

The second is the belief that statecraft represents not just the separation of political power from religion but also economic enterprise, that governing means creating the grounds for fair play of individual ambitions. To make sure the best man wins, that state must be centralised in structure, pristine in its commitments to govern “fairly.” The whole-hearted acceptance of centralised statecraft and economic utilitarianism as components of an Indian modernity keeps the middle-class Indian stubbornly resistant to ideas that do not seem “modern”. To the middle class, economic progress is an inevitable and necessary “development” from one stage of evolution to another brought about by a strong state.

That is why the middle class as a bloc cannot think of change in the way we should live or govern ourselves other than by seeking the agency of a more powerful, charismatic, nationalist leader than the existing one.

Believing in centralised political power, middle class Indian consciousness cannot entertain the idea of devolution of powers to the lowest levels of governance. Its notions of modern statecraft make all forms of governance before the modern state such as gram sabhas “primitive” or “pre-modern.”

That is perhaps why the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, though approved by Parliament in 1992, remain unfulfilled. Apart from some critics and votaries of local government, both political parties and the middle class have left it on the shelves as an experiment not worthy of modernism as we understand it.

The refusal to think outside the inherited notions of a modern economy also affects the articulate middle class attitude to environment protection; it is reflected in the refusal to take seriously the choices for alternative sources of energy and most perniciously, the belief that to vote for nuclear energy is to “bat” for growth.

The conservatism of the Indian middle class extends to its image of India’s place in the global arena. For many articulate Indians, this country has the potential to carve out a new world order. But the elements of that vision are strikingly banal, replicative of existing and tattered systems such as country groupings. BRICS, an acronym thought up in Wall Street, brought together nations with cultures that could otherwise have given the world a moral vision by which to re-assess the existing one based on wars, markets and genocide.

Ensconced in a hall of mirrors that reflect the images of satiation and bubbling appetites, the Indian middle class cannot see a malaise that is deeper than just an economic slowdown or a rising fiscal deficit.

That is why environmental activism is derided as a “hobby” of spoilt rich children, why so few are concerned about the toll rampant competitiveness takes on our children and about the decline of institutions of higher learning. And this is just the beginning.