The Political Economy of Lifestyle: Consumption, India’s New Middle Class and State-Led Development

Abstract

This essay analyzes the political economy of lifestyle that frames middle class consumption in post-liberalization India. The essay argues that the new middle class in India is part of a state-led project of development rather than an expanding consumer group that has naturally been produced by economic growth. Economic liberalization in India operates through two disparate but simultaneous languages of economic development and economic growth. On the one hand, state, non-governmental organizations and World Bank sponsored projects produce narratives of sustainable development that primarily target subaltern social groups. On the other hand, state-led and global policies of economic liberalization deploy celebratory languages of middle class consumption as a sign of the success of such policies. These narratives of middle class consumption and subaltern sustainable development are part of a singular set of state developmentalist strategies in the post-liberalization period. This role of the state suggests that the politics of sustainability will require more than attitudinal shifts amongst middle class individuals. The essay concludes by analyzing possibilities for cross-class alliances between subaltern groups and sections of the middle classes that the state cannot successfully incorporate into this new middle class model of development.