India’s New Middle Class and the Critical Activist Milieu

One manifestation of India’s recent transformations and rapid economic growth
has been the emergence of a new group referred to as the “new middle class.” The
relatively recent and growing literature on this topic represents the new middle
class as a relatively homogenous social group with specific lifestyles and politics.
The main objective of this article is to critically engage with these homogenizing
assumptions. Based on original research, I introduce presence of a group within
the new middle class – critical activist milieu – who in their work and lifestyle are
contentious and explicitly reject the bourgeoisie values and attitudes that are widely ascribed to the Indian new middle class.