The 'new' middle class in India: a re-assessment

[extract] This paper seeks to go some way towards unravelling the impact of neo-liberal policies on classbased cultures in India. Specifically, it focuses on the experiences and worldviews of the middle classes, the class group or fraction said to have expanded greatly in recent times and to have been the main beneficiaries of the neo-liberal reforms of the Indian economy instigated in the early 1990s. In this paper, we explore two dimensions of these changes: work and discourses of efficiency; and the impact of these reforms on gender and class relations.