size of the country’s middle class

Price, a non-profit organization related to India’s consumer economy and civic condition, said in a report released last Wednesday that the next two and a half years If the country’s economic growth rate remains 6 to 7 percent during the decades, then the size of the middle class in the country will increase from the size of 2020-21 to 61 percent in 2046-47. The report titled ‘The Rise of India’s Middle Class’ is based on the data collected by ‘PRICE’. ‘PRICE’ has collected these figures by conducting a survey across the country through ICE’s 360. The latest report is based on responses from 40,000 households across 25 states in the country. By 2047, India’s estimated total population of 1.66 billion will increase the size of the middle class to 1.02 billion. In the year 2020-21, then the share of the middle class in the total population of the country was 43.2 crore. However, there is no universal definition of who constitutes the middle class. Keeping this in mind, Price has defined the Indian middle class as people earning between Rs 1.09 lakh and Rs 6.46 lakh annually, based on 2020-21 prices. Based on the family income, this figure has been considered from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 30 lakh annually. According to the report, with the increase in total purchasing power, India will become one of the largest markets in the world. The report said, by the end of this decade, the composition of the country’s population will change. The new composition of the country’s population will be such that the lower income group will become part of the middle class. In this way, a structure will emerge in which people from the weaker income groups will be at the bottom and there will be a huge presence of the middle class in the middle. At the top there will be a large group of wealthy people. The report also states that the size of wealthy households in India will increase five-fold in the current decade to 2030 and rural areas of the country will play a major role in economic growth. According to the report, the number of households earning more than Rs 2 crore annually has doubled between 2016 and 2021. The report also states that the western part of the country has the highest number of affluent people (8.03 lakh compared to 3.94 lakh in the northern states). According to the report, Maharashtra is at the top in this case (6.48 lakh wealthy families). It is followed by Delhi (1.81 lakh households), Gujarat (1.41 lakh households), Tamil Nadu (1.37 lakh households) and Punjab (1.01 lakh households). Nearly half of the country’s wealthy people live in Maharashtra and Delhi. According to the report, there is a huge gap between families with lower income group and families with more economic resources. According to the report, the average income of families in India in 2020-21 was Rs 5.43 lakh. Middle class and wealthy families earn 13 times and 50 times more, respectively, than the income of a poor family.

With the increase in the purchasing power of the people in the country, the economic condition of the country will be strengthened and the world will see India as a big market, but what is a matter of concern in the report is the increasing difference between the income of the rich and the poor. The government should make a solid policy from now on to reduce this growing income gap and how the income of the lower class can be increased. If India has to join the list of developed countries in the next two decades, then the priority of the government should be to increase the income of the lower class.

– Irwin Khanna (Chief Editor, Dainik Uttam Hindu)