23 Class debate in india

Anindita Chakravarthy

Introduction

Scholars from different disciplines- like economies, Sociology, Media studies, Political Science, Socio-cultural Anthropology, etc are fascinated by the term ‘class’, determined primarily as economic categories and emerging as outcomes due to the amalgamation of various socio-cultural phenomenon. Sociologists have heavily drawn from Karl Marx and Max Weber in order to have a proper understanding of the term ‘class’. Literature on the “class structure in India” Gupta (2011) is not available plentiful as on caste system. The inherent fact is embedded with the applicability of ‘class’ as a relevant construct in post-colonial India, where there also exists an intertwined relationship between caste and class. Methodologies to establish ‘class’ boundaries not only differ but also vary around the socially significant definitional concepts like education, income, occupation and culture in India. Rather than being paradigmatic in its approach, this module attempts to have an overall understanding of the nature and actual practice of class structure in India.

The module has six sections. Section one deals with an analysis of the Rural class structure of India; section two, on the Urban class in India; section three examines the complexities of Middle classes in India; section four discusses the working class and the working class movement in India; section five focuses on the debates on Backward classes and the Backward classes’ movements in India and section six analyses the complex caste and class conflict in India.

Section one: Rural Class Structure

In rural community in India, the rank order can be described in terms of agrarian production and relations of different social strata to property, depending upon the quality of agricultural land and infrastructure for cultivating it. In agrarian areas, the following are the seven principal classes that have emerged during the British rule-(1)zamindars created by the British government (2)absentee landlords (3)tenants under zamindars and absentee landlords (4) the class of peasant proprietors divided into upper, middle and lower strata (5) agricultural labourer (6)the modern class of merchants and 7) the modern class of money lenders.(Desai; 1976)

A.R. Desai in his book, “Social Background of Indian Nationalism” has had a detailed discussion of the nature and growth of these classes. According to Desai, these are the classes that have come into existence as a result of the basic economic transformation brought about by various acts of the British Government, the penetration of the Indian society by commercial and other forces from the outside capitalist world and the establishment of modern industries in India. The introduction of private property in land, in the form of Zamindari and Ryotwari systems by the British government, brought into being the new classes of large estate owners, the zamindars and the peasant proprietors (ibid). The creation of the right to lease land brought into being such classes as tenants and sub-tenants, the creation of the right to purchase and sell land together with the right to hire and employ labour on land, created conditions for the growth of the class of absentee landlords and that of agricultural proletariat. Along with the class of zamindars, tenants, peasant’s proprietors and land labourers, there developed in the agrarian area, on an increasing scale, such groups as modern money lenders and merchants. The above-mentioned classes and groups were unknown in pre-British society. Though the classes of moneylenders and merchants existed in the rural areas in the pre-British India, their function and position in the old economy were substantially different from those in the new economy (Desai; 1976).The classes of modern merchants and moneylenders in agrarian areas might be described as the new classes linked up with the new capitalist economy and performing functions quite different from those which they performed in the social economy of the medieval pre-British Indian society. The modern commercial bourgeoisie was also a new evolution.

A. R. Desai has stated that the farming community of an average Indian village is found to be composed of several strata of cultivators, highly differentiated from each other in respect of the size of land owned or cultivated, number of draught and cattle possessed, nature and amount of capital invested in farming, types of tools and implements used, amount of family or hired labour employed, techniques of cultivation practised, extent of surplus produce sold in the market, amount of gain or loss from farming business and the volume of savings or deficits made. According to D.R. Gadgil, it is often said that the economic power in the countryside is today exercised chiefly by two elements. The first of these is represented by the trader-money lender class who chiefly profit from all opportunities of gain connected with the finance of agricultural production and with trading in the countryside. This element is connected chiefly with the urban trading and financial communities and acts as their representative in the countryside. The other element is that of the substantial landlords and farmers. These are ordinarily holders of land as also cultivators of it on a comparatively large scale and they usually wield considerable political and social power. In some instances the two elements would have much in common and may act together closely (Desai; 1976).Due to an on-going process of differentiation at an increasing rate among the agricultural population, the class of the agricultural wage labourers was rapidly growing. This class of people are living below the poverty level and experiencing high levels of vulnerability.

Section Two: Urban Class Structure

Urban industrial social stratification is predominantly characterized by professional and working class. Professionalism requires the need of training in order to acquire skills for performing specific kinds of labour and work. Professional classes reflect social and structural differentiation in the fields of occupation, industry and economy. Emergence of the professional classes focusses on the prominence of social mobility in the persisting social stratification. Urban-industrial social stratification consists of the following classes-1)upper class 2)upper middle class 3)lower middle class 4)working class. These classes are generally formed on the basis of income and occupation. It might be difficult to know the real income from apparent occupational status.

Studies of urban industrial social stratification in India have been initiated as a reaction to the studies of rural-agrarian relations, migration from rural to urban areas, social mobility and increasing number of urban industrial towns. Based out of the understanding of the discussion, A.R. Desai has made in his book, “Social Background of Indian Nationalism”, the urban class structure can be divided mainly into four groups: 1) The modern class of capitalists; industrial, commercial and financial, 2) the modern working class engaged in mining and other enterprise, 3) the class of petty traders and shopkeepers bound up with modern capitalist economy, 4) the professional classes such as technicians, doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, managers, clerks and others, comprising of the intelligentsia and educated middle class. The modern capitalist class grew rapidly between1914 to 1947, a period close to India’s independence and on the whole was not tied up with pre-imperialist feudal interests, either economically or politically. According to Desai, along with the advent of railways, and accumulation of profits in the hands of the Indian trading class, a new class of industrial bourgeoisie in the country emerged, such as mill-owners, mine owners and owners of other capitalist enterprises. Desai claimed that along with the growth of these modern industries in India, there emerged the working class, such as factory workers, mine workers, railway workers, etc. The working class is highly stratified within itself, in the context of structures of caste, ethnicity and gender, which initially had prevented this class from developing a general homogenous class consciousness. Desai added that during the British period, the need for the establishment of new commercial enterprises and administrative system prompted the British government to initiate modern education. This resulted in the growth of modern professional classes like, managers, clerks, engineers, technologists, journalists, etc. This modern professional class, “socially” became “an integral part of the new capitalist society” in urban India. In addition to these new social classes, there existed a big class of petty traders and shopkeepers, contributing to the growth of modern towns and cities in Urban India.

Section Three: Middle classes of India:

The middle classes in India are a product of both capitalist development and the state. Higher technical education provides a passport for a high status, lucrative job. But interestingly there is a marked lack of homogeneity among different middle classes. In fact, structural distinctions are quiet marked even between the apparently equal/homogenous classes. Those people identifying as middle class do not form a ‘class for itself’ (i.e.) they do not form a “socially cohesive layer in economic relations” (Savaala; 2012). In India, the new middle classes are separate from the old middle class in terms of differences in their lifestyles. The old middle class family in India is related with the class of wealthy merchants and professionals who traditionally have a long family history of being related “organizations mainly the government and other public employers” (Savaala 2012). It is noted that these middle classes are neither ‘laborers’ nor are they ‘elite’; their existence is in between. They depend on the political and economic elite for their conditions of existence. These ‘middle classes’ are into the race of acquiring more and more educational qualifications, which helped them in the transformations of enhanced status. So the new middle class life centers on the notion of ‘social value’ and the ‘practices’ of those values. It seems that the middle class is ever expanding. Continuous inflow of new groups entering this class due to reservations, subsidies, and education result in different habitus and their economic rise throw-up, adhering to the class, continue to play a key role in keeping the class fractured.

From the point of interest of an economics and marketing specialist, in order to get a precise estimate, middle classes in India have often been defined by economic criterion alone, based on annual household income as often done by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).The estimation could also be attained by using a combination of various educational and consumption criteria. The estimation reveals a peculiarity, that there are people from middle classes in India, who cannot afford a car, or even a washing machine or spend holidays abroad but can enjoy the luxury of having a servant at home. This shows that defining a middle class in India is a difficult task, because defining it strictly by the criteria of consumption too misses the fact of using the criteria as a social category. The middle classes in India are both “symbolic” and “local” and as such there is no official definition of the middle class. According to the World Bank and other sources like NACER, middle class in India comprises of one million to approximately 300 million. According to a report by the Asian Development Bank, the middle class in India could rise to about the 1.2 billion mark in the next twenty years, if the current economic growth is sustained.

It is important to understand how Urban India is changing. It is a complex picture where both the cities and towns are redefining themselves in terms of new forms of urbanism. What is the picture of this complexity? The rapid socio-economic changes in cities, along with increase in the growth of small towns, have become the symbols of modernity such as institutes for computer training, internet, telephone booths, and satellite dishes; including a high, technologically driven, globalizing economy presents a highly complex social reality. This complexity is further complicated by the growth of middle class housing complexes and malls, with the newer models of cars everyday replacing the earlier sign of high class symbol, ‘Ambassador’, where the larger metropolises such as ‘Mumbai’ seek the status of Global cities.

What is very clear within this complexity is the growth of urban middle classes, who assertively claim a national visible role as agents of globalization in India. Savaala (2012) argues that we need to recognize that there is a growing significance of the urban middle class in local, national and transnational imagination of globalization in the 21st Century, where significantly middle class is shaping contemporary politics and economy in India. The close link between the implementation of economic reforms and the rise of a new middle class in contemporary India, initiated since 1990s have been accompanied by an array of visual images and public discourses that have centered on the shifting role of the middle class and their attitudes, lifestyles and consumption practices. What are these images? Advertisements of cell phones, cars, washing machines, branded goods, foreign vacations, all catering to the middle class reflect the rising wage levels of managerial staff of multinational companies, emerging middle class culture in India.

The growing visibility of this ‘new Indian middle class’ embodies the emergence of a wider political culture, one that has shifted from older ideologies of a state managed economy to a middle- class based culture of consumption (Fernandes 2000). We need to accept that the symbols of development have changed. In the early years of Independence the symbols of development included- large dams, and factories. Within the liberalizing India the symbols include cell phones, washing machines, television – especially goods that were not readily available during earlier decades of state-controlled markets. Adding to this while the earlier state socialist tendencies tended to depict villagers and workers as objects of development, the recent mainstream political discourse increasingly portray urban middle class consumers as the representative citizens of liberalizing India (Savaala 2012).

The proponents of economic liberalization portray the middle class as a group that is fundamentally tied to the success of economic reforms and assert that the middle class is a sizeable market and is the idealized standard for the Indian Nation that is finally competing in a global world. Whereas the critics of liberalization highlight the negative social and cultural effects of consumerism, vulnerability of middle class to the excesses of consumerism, decreasing social responsibility (Varma 1998). Finally what Rajni Kothari (1993) refers to is ‘growing amnesia to poverty’, where there is a gradual abdication of a broad, ethical and moral responsibility to the poor and to the Nation as a whole. What is argued here is that though one has perceived urban middle class as a self-evident force of consumption and the prime recipients of the benefits of liberalization, there is a lack of sustained research on ‘middle class’- leading to lack of adequate data (Varma 1998)

Why is that? Scholars writing about economic reforms and globalization have for the most part tended to assume that the middle class benefit uniformly from policies of economic liberalization. This perspective is simplistic because it ignored important internal differentiations within the middle class, based on caste, ethnicity, language, region, religion and gender (Jodhka and Prakash 2011). Further, the restructuring and privatization of public sector units, yield short term gains to certain section and thus cannot assume that all segments of ‘middle class’ will transition smoothly to new economy jobs. For example, technology driven economy is not only to be seen in ‘computer software professionals’ but also in the high number of self-employed computer training centers mushroomed all over towns in India. Therefore the new middle class is not ‘one’ homogeneous group. Individuals from varying social segments can acquire the kind of capital (education, skills, credentials, cultural resources) that can provide them with access to membership in this distinctive middle class. The rise of a new middle class represents emerging political elite that is shaping responses to economic reform (Savaala 2012).

Another important visible middle class consumer identity is the emergence of consumption patterns and lifestyles associated with newly available commodities as in ‘urban space’. The middle class develops new suburban aesthetic identities and lifestyles that seek to displace visual signs of poverty from public spaces- e.g. – Gated Communities – Magarpatta City, Pune, Bangalore (Chacko and Varghese 2009). Such middle class practices provoke conflicts with the urban poor over the control of public space. Spatial practices produce conflict whether the street vendor – sell their wares in middle class neighborhoods, which is regulated within the discourse of privacy and safety, thus clearly linked to the rise of an assertive new middle class identity in the context of liberalization. Further, street vendors represent the burgeoning working class service sector –that has been absorbing workers from manufacturing sectors such as the textile industry that have experienced economic decline in the face of global competition.

The middle class in India is in the ‘ongoing classification struggle’. Against the Indian backdrop, the struggle of the middle classes is about belonging- ‘acceptance’. Along with that the new middle class is featured with the commodity consumption. Under the arch of new economy and globalization, the urban middle classes specially are seen to be receiving material benefits of jobs. The new middle class takes the pride of increasing service sector where women’s presence is increasing specially the urban women are seen in the forefront of benefits of employment opportunities. Thus this new middle class, under a neo-liberal paradigm is capable of creating a new public sphere. This class acts as a melting pot in India where the cultural constructs of gender redefines and restructures it.

Section Four: Working Class and the Working Class Movements in India

According to the encyclopedic meaning of “working class”, we understand that this section of the society does not possess the means of production and “is forced to sell” their labour power to those who own the means of production (Nathan; 1987). A.R. Desai in his book, “Social background of Indian Nationalism”, stated that, in India, people from “first few generation of working class” happened to be the “pauperized peasants and ruined village artisans” that have suffered from their village backwardness and had migrated to the cities and became workers. The working class in modern India is the offshoot of the modern industries, transport and plantations, modern factories, mining industry and transport established in India during the British period. In his discussion on the working class, Desai has marked that, the working class people in India are basically “property less”, more “militant” in their outlook, into the operation of more “power-driven machinery” than any other peasants and is “divorced from modern means of production”.

Dev Nathan in a web article on “Structure of Working Class in India” has classified the working class in India into four broad categories: 1) those who get more than the value of labour power, 2) who get a wage reasonable to meet the cost of production and reproduction of labour power, 3) those who get a wage, more or less to cover the immediate cost of production of the labour power, but has to depend on non-capitalist sector in order to reproduce itself and 4) those who are unable to meet the cost of the production of their labour power. The composition of this working class in India is further effected by certain social factors like “caste”, “gender” and “ethnicity.” (Nathan; 1987)

Sociologists have recently explored the area of working class movement by developing the discipline of industrial sociology. However, the study on the working class has been in India, largely confined to the industrial development, to the growth and activities of trade unions rather than collective mobilization for direct action of workers. Like other sections of society, industrial workers, of both organized and unorganized sectors, resort to various types of collective actions such as strikes, satyagrahas, hunger strikes, bandhs and hartals, gheraos, demonstrations, mass casual leave, work to rule, cutting off the supply of electricity, etc. Strikes by the industrial workers in the industrial sector began with the early phase of modern industrial development. The period prior to 1918 has witnessed few “spontaneous”, and “unorganized” industrial strikes. However the period post 1918 has witnessed the outbreak of a series of strikes of the Indian working class, throughout the country in places like Mumbai, Kanpur, Calcutta, Sholapur, Jamshedpur, Chennai and Ahmedabad (Desai; 1976). By the end of the 20s and the beginning of 30s, the working class supported the freedom struggle of India, participated in meetings and organized demonstrations and processions against the British Raj. It was during this period that the Trade Union started to form in various parts of the country. Post 1927, the Indian working class began to evolve as a greater “political force”, “independent class programme” (Desai; 1976). During the years of 1928-30, Bombay Textile workers called forth the biggest economic strike. The workers of Mumbai, Sholapur, Kolkata, Hyderabad and other places, went on strike to support the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-33. The workers of Ahmedabad went on total strike to protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi. Post-1938 period witnessed a rapid development of trade union organizations, affiliated to the All India Trade Union Congress throughout the country. The workers supporting the Communist party launched the strikes in the mid ‘50s as a form of political struggle. During the post-independence period, the strikes are greater in number on non-economic issues than on economic issues

Section 5: Backward Classes and the Backward Classes’ Movements in India

The term ‘Backward classes’, raises questions like a)What does the term ‘backward classes’ mean?

b) Where lies the position of the backward classes in the social stratification system in India? c) Does the term also imply the existence of ‘Forward classes’? In answer to all these above-mentioned questions, K.L. Sharma, states that the term ‘backward classes’ majorly includes the weaker section of the society, “particularly” the Scheduled tribes, the Scheduled castes and the Other Backward Castes. The category includes people who are in need of “social protection and help for economic and social upliftment”. Actually, the castes and the occupations of these people are the “two structural criterion which we may use to define the term ‘backward classes’.” (Sharma 2007) In terms of caste hierarchy, they are the people who are “intermediate and functionary (clean) castes”. But it should be clear in our mind that the people from the ‘backward classes’ are considered inferior to the ‘twice-born castes’. According to Andre Beteille, peasant caste forms the core of the backward classes who certainly are far behind from the upper caste in various fields like education, government jobs, etc.

In the book, “Indian Social Structure and Change” K.L. Sharma we find the mention of an interesting fact, that there is no uniform meaning of the term “backward classes” at the national level. Before 1948 there was no category of backward classes. The government set up commissions to conduct a study on whom to categorize as the “backward” classes among the Hindus and Muslims, on the basis of certain standards like educational, social and economic marginalization. Sharma argues that “backwardness” is considered as an attribute of the group and not an individual. The Constitution of India states that the “socially and educationally backward classes of citizens” comprise the backward classes in India. The government of India has rejected the recommendation of Kaka Kalekar Commission’s sole criterion of using “caste” as the “unit” of determining the economic and educational backwardness. The centre also could not conclude on a uniform criterion to determine the ‘backwardness’ and thereby left the states free to develop their own criterion in enlisting the ‘backward’ groups. As a result, we observe that in 1966 the Government of Andhra Pradesh decided to use “family”, in order to classify the ‘backward’ group, whereas, the Karnataka Government in 1900, decided to opt for the “income and occupation of a family” as a criterion for determining the ‘backwardness’. Again we observe that the Government of Kerala has adopted the “educational attainment and economic position”, as the criterion to determine ‘backwardness’ among people. But at the end we observe that whichever be the ways the states have adopted to define the ‘backwardness’ of the citizens of India, they all have agreed to the principle of reservation in jobs for the people from the backward classes as per the direction of the Supreme Court in India based on the Mandal Commission. In order to enjoy this kind of privilege, from time to time it has been observed that many caste groups want to be categorized as the “backward classes” of India. For example, the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas in Karnataka, the Ezhavas and the Nayars in Kerala, the Reddis and the Kammas in Andhra Pradesh, Nadars and the Vaniyars in Tamil Nadu, The Kurmis, Ahirs and Koris of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar exert pressure in order to continue to be recognized as the ‘backward classes’ of India.

Backward Classes Movements have never been as successful in northern India as they have in the South due to the reaction of the upper castes in the north against the backward classes’ movements. It is a matter of fact that before independence, the upper castes used to dominate the Indian society while after independence the backward classes started movements in order to “capture” (K.L. Sharma; 2007) the political power and the socio-economic upliftment. The two most prominent backward classes’ movements in India so far are Jotiba Phule’s movement in the Bombay Presidency during the years from 1870 to 1930 and the anti- Brahman Nadar movement in Chennai. So here we clearly observe one very important fact, that often the term “class” system has a functionary role to play for the complex “caste” system in India. Thereby, I justify my opinion to have a further discussion on the relation between “caste and class” in my next segment which I already mentioned in the beginning.

Section Six: Class and Caste Conflict in India

Following the Weberian scheme, sociologists have studied social stratification under three major categories; class, status and power. In the Indian context, it is significant to remember that caste, class and power can interact away from the purview of strict hierarchies of order and conformity. As Louis Dumont believes, caste hierarchy can allow economies or politics to enter “surreptitiously” (Gupta 2012). Thus our understandings of social stratification must not be governed principally by notions of hierarchies of order and conformity otherwise social conflict involving caste, class and politics will remain outside the purview of social stratification.

It is also evident in M.N. Srinivas’s monograph on Rampura village that the members are of the ‘dominant caste’ and that they must be economically well off and are politically well represented in terms of numbers. Thereby, here also, we find that caste; class and power interact with the sources of social dynamism and help in activating the changes. If we go by Andre Béteille’s documentations, then we find that he clearly stated about the shift in traditional power alignments from the traditional elite to the non-Brahmins in order to uphold the fact of “how caste, economic class and power interact” (Gupta 2012). With regard to caste, class and power, even Pradip Bose, in the spectrum of Bihar, emphasized that caste alignments do not follow a strict hierarchical order, and even this order is meant for change depending upon the existential conditions of class and power practiced in that community. The picture of the Halpatis of the south Gujrat portrays even more a cumbersome relation between caste and class orientations. Even among the tribals like the Halpatis of Gujrat, Bremen’s study reveals that these Halpatis are neither full-fledged Hindus, nor are they real Adivasis; for several centuries they are found to occupy the lowest rank in the agrarian class structure. They are the ‘untouchables’ in the village. Halpatis are the pauperized landless labourers in the villages. They are a group of people who are educationally deprived, politically exploited and socially ignored to such an extent that they hardly can hope to climb up the ladder of ‘social mobility’. The major part of the essays even gives us a picture of critical connection between caste and class by portraying the “structural constraints” inhibiting the development of the class-oriented political activism among the caste of landless labourers like the ‘tribal Halpatis’. The study of the tribals of Chotonagpur region also dejects the myth of the practice of an egalitarian society among the tribes. It has been found that the economic differentiation on the basis of that the political differentiation has already been there among these tribes.

Conclusion

The gap in income among various social groups worldwide is increasing phenomenally. In India capitalism causes suffering to the working class, so much so that it is noticeable for the so-called middle class white collar employees to be included within this working class. This is because they too produce surplus value for the capitalists. Again it is distinct from the truth of the fact, which lies inside focusing on mass culture as an expression of bourgeois value. According to Marx, in a capitalist society, culture is a mere tool at the hand of the capitalists; ‘culture industry’ is an apparatus and a fusion of work and leisure. According to Gary Day, the nature of amusements found there in video games is nothing but the training in the use of technology which is favorable for the development of capitalism. So in today’s world too both work and leisure reinforce each other to continue and promote the values of capitalism. Culture industry is a fusion of the value of ‘individualism’ of the middle class and the value of the group of the working class. Thus this culture industry, according to Day, is an ‘artificial synthesis’. Moreover, this culture industry is the symbol of the triumph of the bourgeoisie. Analyzing class calls for an understanding of the connection between economic arrangement of the society and the culture expression of it. In India, the problem lies in the fact that we no longer define ‘class’ in terms of production alone; we have to relate it to patterns of consumption

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