Drivers, pani puri vendors enter middle class |
Believe it or not but the fact remains that India`s middle class has seen new entrants. Pani puri vendors, dosa sellers, carpenters, welders, launderers, drivers and cable TV technicians have all pulled themselves out of the clutches of poverty and leapt into a section of the middle class . A paper titled `The Rise of the New Middle Class and the Role of Offshoring of Services`, has found that a faster pace of growth and higher intensity of work has led to the upward mobility. Lower middle class households earn better not because they are engaged in different occupations compared to the poor, but because they have been able to get more of their family members to do the same things than the poor do. In the study, "lower middle class" refers to households whose daily per capita consumption expenditure is between $2 and $4 (Rs 134-Rs 268) each. Poor households spend less than $2 per capita per day. The social base of the middle class is expanding and cutting across caste, occupation, age, gender and geography. The study proposes a new category called the `new middle` with daily per capita consumption spending range of $2-$10.
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