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.