BRICS and India's New Middle Class

There has probably not been a single more or less complex society in which there has not been a middle class throughout human history. It has existed since at least Neolithic times, on all continents except Antarctica, and in all civilizations, while constantly changing and transforming depending on the level of technical, social and political development.

At the end of the cold war, with the beginning of globalization in the nineties, the world faced the phenomenon of the "new middle class," and nowhere did it manifest itself as vividly as in the BRICS countries. This is understandable: the new middle class could not have emerged without the relatively free circulation of goods and services, highly skilled labor migration, the digital revolution, and the intensification of cultural exchanges. Megacities and agglomerations have become the capitals of this new middle class – cities where trade flows converge, where the concentration of financial, industrial and intellectual capital is so strong that it generates new forms of social relations and a specific environment.

This new middle class has its own set of characteristics. First of all, it mostly consists of people who have moved to megacities relatively recently and are striving to gain a place for themselves under the dim capital's sun. They have the necessary tools to do this: they are usually enterprising, proactive, willing to take risks, have mastered the professions most in demand in a digitalized society, and thanks to a combination of patience, talent, and luck, they have been able to work their way up. Many of them interact in one way or another now (or have interacted in the past) with multinational corporations, have traveled the world (as tourists or in the process of relocating staff) and are well aware of how it works. Or rather, how the part of it that they encountered in the course of their work is organized, that is, the constellation of megacities and agglomerations – ports and drivers of the new economy.

These are people who have managed to earn a lot of money in a short time. They weren't enough to turn them into nouveau riche, but enough to buy an apartment in one of the heavily guarded and walled-off residential complexes growing in the new elite areas of the cities. These walls form their limited world, in which they feel safe, and help create a special space connected primarily with other such "fenced enclaves" in other states and, to a lesser extent, with the country where they are located. Moreover, thanks to globalization and digitalization, the inhabitants of such enclaves, located, say, in the suburbs of Delhi, interact much more often with the inhabitants of enclaves in other parts of the world than with neighbors behind the fence.

This does not mean that the new middle class is completely devoid of national feeling. Many of its representatives have it, although it is quite peculiar, associated more with a sense of belonging to a culture than a nation-state, and based on interaction with the state on the principle of "you to me, I to you" instead of unconditional loyalty. At the same time, the infringement of this national feeling often causes a sharp reaction, and the successful actions of the leader of the state in the international arena – pride in his country.

Despite the common features, the "new middle class" in each BRICS country has its own specifics. Indian began to form in the late 1980s, but a sharp rise occurred in the late 1990s, when India took the place of a supplier of cheap labor for the global digital economy. Since then, the number and qualifications of Indian workers have grown significantly. Indians holding high positions in TNCs are no longer uncommon, and it is not uncommon to hear about the "Indianization" of the top echelon of multinational business.

In the process of transformation, the Indian new middle class has lost its sense of admiration for everything British that the "old middle class" of India was traditionally famous for. He was formed in rather specific conditions – on the one hand, he was historically characterized by a natural desire to throw the British out of India and govern his country himself, on the other – by a reverence for the English way of life, English education and "Englishness" in general. At first, the "new middle class" adopted this admiration: for example, the first large residential complexes of the new model in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi, received names that allowed their inhabitants to associate themselves, if not with the British aristocracy, then at least with the upper stratum of the English middle class: Ridgewood, Princeton, Windsor, Oakwood, Hamilton. However, they were gradually replaced by names associated with the Western lifestyle, but at the same time more universal, without reference to a specific country: City Park, Park View, Emerald Estate, Gardens Gallery, and often with an Indian flavor. This fact reflects a change in attitudes towards Britain and the Western world as a whole: whereas previously the West was perceived as a model of knowledge and style that must be followed (including an unrestrained craving for consumption), the new middle class perceives it much more pragmatically as one of the sources of wealth and knowledge from which to draw, but at the same time remember about your "indianness". In short, gone are the days when an Indian intellectual or businessman was willing to overpay for a British pseudo–antique bedside table to demonstrate his status; now he would rather order it from the country where it is produced - that is, from China.

What does this mean for the BRICS countries, given that it is the middle class that is the most politically active stratum of modern society, from which come representatives of political, economic and military elites, as well as the administrative apparatus serving them, the media and the expert community? At first glance, replacing the awl with soap: representatives of the new middle class, pragmatically choosing the best product from those that the global market offers them, and willingly moving to the United States when the opportunity arises to move higher up the career ladder, is a dubious alternative to the admiring British Indian intellectuals living in Delhi. But, as it seems, everything is more complicated.

On the one hand, the network in which representatives of the new middle class live presupposes a certain hierarchy: there are points where financial flows converge and financial centers are located, there are those where the bulk of R&D takes place, and there are those where the bulk of the workforce is concentrated, ensuring the functioning of the entire mechanism and dreaming of rising above according to the hierarchical ladder. On the other hand, such a network, firstly, presupposes the establishment and continuous functioning of horizontal links between lower– and middle-level nodes, many of which are located on the territory of the BRICS countries. Secondly, the hierarchy of nodes is not as obvious as it might seem: due to the peculiarities of the global digital economy, many prefer to settle in places where life is cheaper, more stable, safer and simply more convenient (including the quality of social services provided by the state, as clearly demonstrated by COVID). Finally, the hierarchy of nodes itself may change depending on the actions of national governments – it is enough to recall the flight of TNK headquarters from London, which followed Brexit. One should not discount the factor of the "new patriotism" of the new middle class, which has not yet been fully explored, but implies a much more complex relationship with the state than traditional patriotism.

All this opens up a completely new field of interaction for the politicians of the BRICS countries, requiring coordinated actions and the development of new strategies, and a huge field for research for scientists, the results of which will be in demand in the very near future.