‘Market is the fig leaf of the new middle class’

Christophe Jaffrelot, director of CERI at Sciences Po (Paris) is an old French India hand. For a long time now, he documented the emergence and development of right-wing movements in India. His recent book, edited along with Dutch India scholar Peter van der Veer, is Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China (Sage). In an interview with Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr,  Jaffrelot talks about his visits to India, the growing India-France ties and the middle class in India and in China in the era of economic liberalisation and globalisation.

How often do you visit India?
I come about three times a year. I came last month as part of President Sarkozy’s delegation. I am going to Pune to sign a MoU with Pune University to facilitate the exchange of students and researchers with Sciences Po. There will also be one with the University of Madras. We have similar arrangements with JNU, Jamia Millia and St Stephens College.

Is there greater interest in India?
For a long time, the French were fascinated by China.  But now there is as much focus on India. France has a large number of India specialists, second only to Britain. There are 50 scholars looking at India and that is a big number.

The impression that emerges from the book is that the new middle class that has emerged in the wake of liberalisation is economically dynamic but socially conservative.
It is not a contradiction. The new openness in the economy is based on meritocracy and meritocracy can be conservative because it ignores the social starting points which can be very contrasting. Then it means that you are justifying hierarchies. Market is the fig-leaf for tradition-based hierarchy. The Indian middle class is largely constituted by upper caste people. The word middle is a misnomer here. The new middle class, both in India and in China, is a 10 per cent slice. It does not represent the bulk in the middle rung of a society.

Do you think that the new aggressive middle class in India and China will veer towards a right-wing ideology the way Japanese and German middle class did in the 1920s and 1930s?
I do not know much about Japan. The German middle class were pauperised during the economic crisis at the end of the 1930s. It was at that point that it turned towards the right. The middle class in India and China are more like the American middle class. They are oriented towards consumerism. They are not engaged with politics and society the way European middle class is. In America, middle class participation in the elections has been going down. The same thing can be noticed in India as well. The upper caste middle class does not feel the need to go out and vote. It can ring up the politician and the bureaucrat to get its work done. Also, the new Indian middle class operates in an off-shore economy. It relates to the world outside. There is no need to relate to the majority inside the country. The middle class can remain a small segment and enjoy the affluence.

Can we say that economic liberalisation has not been accompanied by political liberalisation — more debates in the political arena, greater participation?
More debates are not necessarily to the liking of the elite groups because they prefer to implement policies without any public exposure. There was no real debate in 1991. Also, the new middle class is not in necessarily in favour of the parliamentary brand of democracy. It is more for the managerial mode. It has arguments against democracy: the corruption of politicians, the inefficiency of the parliamentary system. It wants the country to be managed like a corporation. This is one of the reasons why Narendra Modi is popular among the middle class of Gujarat.

Is not the market meant to break down the traditional hierarchies?
It is and eventually they will be broken. But the market is not an ideal solvent of social differences when it reinforces and amplifies the initial differences. Those who have already intellectual and economic capitals can make it fructify. 

Can economic liberalisation lead to a political explosion?
The increasing inequalities and the disparities in wealth may create tensions. The rural/urban divide is one case in point but you have also disparities between the south and the west on the one hand and the Bimaru states on the other.

Do you think a middle class among the backward castes is emerging as a result of liberalisation?
For the moment, the Dalit middle class is more a product of the reservation policy. But the corporate sector may find it advisable to pursue the the kind of diversity-oriented policies that American companies do.