Middle Class growth in India

Widening gaps in society with increasingly rich middle class is seen as a negative development in "emerging" countries like India. One needs to recognize that the income gap that has reportedly risen from 1:5 to 1:500 in the past decade is more due to the fact that the middle class is proportionally earning more as compared to the loss on income at the poor level. The gap has widened due to the improving life style of a particular section of society. While it is a noble thought and a goal to keep this ratio at 1:5 levels with same increases in the income at the higher end, one needs to understand that such a change maintains the status quo in absolute terms. For a non-socialist nation to be richer overall, some classes have to take a lead. It’s the middle class in this case. Looking back, many of these rising middle class people have their roots in poor families which decided to educate their children rather than have full stomach of food everyday. They deserve to be where they are right now and role-model the coming generations from poor families. That is not to say that the poor should remain poor but to make the point that for the poor to be better of, someone else above their income level needs to earn much more so that they can spend it and buy whatever goods/services the poor are selling. Measuring growth in percentages at different class levels has its faults too. The quality of living for a person who earns 1000 rupees a month increases if his income doubles to 2000. But is this change in quality of living the same if the income were to double from rupees 20,000 to 40,000. The point here is that as a nation improves economically, the people with higher financial bases will appear to be doing increasingly better than the people in poor classes but that doesn’t necessarily paint the right picture. Ultimately, it’s the most poorest class of people that form the first link in the chain of goods and services that make up a heightened middle-class lifestyle. As people get more to spend, it will ultimately trickle down as income for all the working class. Granted, it is a slow and an irksome process in countries that are relatively young and still coming out of bureaucratic tangles, but it is happening nevertheless. The areas of country where the middle class earns more has seen a general increase in prices for everything from food to real-estate. And the layers of economy who are benefiting from this are getting deeper and deeper with time. One would really like to ask the critics who use sentences like "people used to be more compassionate toward poor in old days" and "rising middle class stampedes the poor" what their solution to the issue is. Is it better to be poor and appear compassionate to make a decent living for yourself and help the poor and the overall economy grow in process. To all those who sit with their pens and look and write for the plight of poor, I have one advice: It’s a great time for intellectual people like you to get out there and make some money. And once you do that try investing the new found wealth in such a way that you don’t have anything to write about.