Understanding the crucial middle

India and China, more than any other Asian nation, are increasingly under the scanner today. They have their similarities and yet are unique in their own ways. They are ancient civilisations, seeking to embrace the promises of a modern world, while grappling with the problems of growth, equity, ecology. Many studies have already been done on these two countries. Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer's edited collection of essays, the product of a Conference held in New Delhi in November 2007, is the latest addition to this existing corpus. What sets apart this anthology, Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China, is that it puts together a comparative study that focuses specifically on the middle class, a section of society that plays a pivotal role in the social, economic, political and global transformations that both these countries are going through.

Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer are scholars whose extensive publications on India and the sub-continent are well known. This volume is a testimony to this involvement. It is not clear, however, whether the thirteen essays included in this volume were the only ones presented at the Conference or if they represent a selection from a wider range of presentations. The papers included touch upon a reasonable range of issues, examining aspects that are crucial to the identity and growth of the middle class in both the countries. The papers on India look mainly at how Indian software professionals perceive their rise in today's India especially when compared with the lives of the previous generation; how new corporate hospitals or healthcare facilities are commercial ventures that feed into the growing Indian middle class dream; of how landscapes are being changed rapidly to re-map the urban over historical sites; and how television, most insidiously, has taken over private spaces and begun to dictate our tastes and behaviour, plotting a new mindset.

The papers on China talk about how consumerism is growing in the country and how the advent of television, the increase in the number of magazines and the culture of entertainment have affected lifestyles. In this group of papers there are a few which deliberate at length about the significance and meaning of the term "middle class". Among these Xiaohong Zhou's article "Chinese Middle Class: Reality or Illusion?" merits special mention since Zhou, while bringing to the fore the constant pan-Chinese debate about whether there is a middle class in China at all, elaborates on the almost slippery categories within which this term seems to move back and forth. Instead of the "middle class" he posits the term "middle income group," something that goes down better with Chinese intellectuals and academics.

This dialogue is equally valid in the Indian context, where the middle class occupies a huge ground and is expanding. After all, in the ever-changing dynamics of Indian society and polity, where there are millions living below the poverty line, anyone who has a place to live in, can afford three meals a day, has access to healthcare as well as the ability to send their children to school, a reasonable amount of disposable income and is directed not by the current economic situation but by aspirations for a better future, certainly qualifies to belong to the middle class. Where the volume gains by setting up a topical discussion, it perhaps falls behind slightly when Jaffrelot and van der Veer tilt towards a caste-centric explanation at a time when Indians are actually making their way away from the confines of caste and communalism into a secular arena. Jaffrelot's reading of voting patterns in India forms a significant chapter in the book. And while we agree with him that the Mandal affair gave rise to political parties and mindsets that were caste-based, today the scenario has changed and it is the desire to share in the dividends of the secular mainstream that perhaps binds Indians together.

An important contribution to the analysis of a pivotal class in India and China, this work will also prove to be a useful reference volume in trying to understand what is common to and what differentiates both these countries.

Pavan K Varma is Director-General, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and Chandana Dutta is Editor, Indian Horizons

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PATTERNS OF MIDDLE CLASS CONSUMPTION IN INDIA AND CHINA

Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer
Sage Publications
300 pages, Rs 695