in about 250 words each.
5. Elucidate the features of middle class in India.
Answers
Answer:
The middle class is a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy. Its usage has often been vague whether defined in terms of occupation, income, education or social status. The definition by any author is often chosen for political connotations. Writers on the left favor the lower-status "working class". Modern social theorists—and especially economists—have defined and re-defined the term "middle class" in order to serve their particular social or political ends.
Within capitalism, "middle-class" initially referred to the bourgeoisie; later, with the further differentiation of classes as capitalist societies developed, the term came to be synonymous with the term petite bourgeoisie.
The common measures of what constitutes middle class vary significantly among cultures. On the one hand, the term can be viewed primarily in terms of socioeconomic status. One of the narrowest definitions limits it to those in the middle fifth of the nation's income ladder. A wider characterization includes everyone but the poorest 20% and the wealthiest 20%.[1] Some theories like "Paradox of Interest", use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class.[2]
In modern American vernacular, the term "middle class" is most often used as a self-description by those persons whom academics and Marxists would otherwise identify as the working class, which are below both the upper class and the true middle class, but above those in poverty. This leads to considerable ambiguity over the meaning of the term "middle class" in American usage. Sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert and Joseph Kahl see this American self-described "middle class" (working class) as the most populous class in the United States.[3]
In 1977 Barbara Ehrenreich and her then husband John defined a new class in the United States as "salaried menial workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor ... [is] ... the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations;" the Ehrenreichs named this group the "professional-managerial class".[4]
There has been significant global middle-class growth over time. In February 2009, The Economist asserted that over half the world's population now belongs to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, so that they do not live from hand-to-mouth as the poor do, and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter.