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Middle class & Modi love
Business Standard|January 25, 2025
The Indian middle class seethes at the growing phenomenon of political parties taking their tax money and showering benefits on the more numerous poorer classes to buy votes
- SHEKHAR GUPTA

India's economic engine is slowing and screeching, and the ones hurting the most are the vast middle classes. Why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) doesn't particularly worry about this, or why the party can still take them for granted, is something we will return to in a bit. First, the larger crisis.

It isn't merely the function of one bad quarter. The central government's statistical organisation, the Reserve Bank of India, and global organisations have all scaled down this year's growth estimate to around 6.5 per cent.

There's little evidence that a turnaround is on the horizon. Economics is complex for me.

It is safer for me to bat on the pitch I am more familiar with: Politics and public opinion. First of all, the air of optimism, the all-conquering "India has arrived" spirit is now ebbing.

The hawa (what we say for vibe) has changed. Millionaires are buying assets and residencies overseas or long-term visas that come with them.

There is plenty of data in the public domain about Indian millionaires shifting overseas. Over the past two years, the average is 5,000, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report. You'd never hear these wealthy complain. They are too smart to take such "pangas". They are simply voting with their feet.

The fact is, they have surpluses, and rather than investing in India, they're moving them overseas.

It's all perfectly legal, and with so many leaving, there's safety and anonymity in numbers.

What about the even wealthier ones? Let's leave the fleeing millionaires aside and leapfrog to billionaires, or even more specifically, dollar billionaires. Most, if not all of them, would be entrepreneurs. It isn't even that many people.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 25, 2025-Ausgabe von Business Standard.

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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 25, 2025-Ausgabe von Business Standard.

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