Twin Movement: State, Market and the Non-Elite Middle Class in Post-Reform India

Abstract

This article explores political economic developments in India’s post-reform period that began in 1991 through the interactions of the non-elite, ordinary middle-class Indians and state institutions and market processes. The article introduces “twin movement” as a concept and revises the Polanyian notion of a double movement of differentiated domains of welfare and neo-liberal state which restricts exploring the tacit relationships that form between the state and the market; how the state subtly forces people to resort to market institutions and processes; and forces/encourages capital accumulation to mitigate challenges of the neo-liberal market. This ethnographic article draws attention to the re-modelling of state institutions that is attuned to neo-liberal market logics; and how this re-modelling modifies state–citizen relationships, and shapes subjectivity and “middleclassness.” In doing so, the article maps how non-elite middleclassness is located in demands, desires, and aspirations; and how intricately these are weaved into the everyday insecurities, risks, and vulnerabilities that constitute the social, economic, and political life of the urban non-elite middle class in neo-liberal India.

Key Words:

• Contractual employment
• neo-liberalism
• non-elite middle class
• post-reform India
• public health
• twin movement

Acknowledgement

We are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. We are grateful to Professor Kevin Hewison for his painstaking and meticulous editing; his suggestions have helped immensely in improving this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Derné is an exception, exploring the position of non-elite, non-English, ordinary middle class Indians. He points towards the “unquestioned normalcy of an academic discourse that refers to English-speaking, urban, consuming elite as a ‘middle class’” (Derné 2008, 40).

2 The Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) of India is an integrated social security system that provides social protection to workers and their immediate dependents and family, in the organised sector in contingencies, such as, sickness, maternity and death or disablement due to an employment injury or occupational hazard.

Additional information

Funding

The ethnographic research involved in this article was for a PhD by Isha Jha and was supported by the University Grants Commission, India. The authors have not received any other grant or funding from any other source.