Middle Class Meltdown: India's Illusion of Stability Is Cracking

INDIA NEWS

By Aniket Chakraborty May 19, 2025 Arrow

From Bengaluru, CEO Ashish Singhal bluntly calls it: "The biggest scam is middle-class salaries."

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Salaries for Indians earning ₹5 lakh to ₹1 crore grew just 0.4% in a decade.

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Meanwhile, food prices soared 80% and inflation quietly eroded buying power.

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Zomato orders now need mental math; every doctor visit is a delayed luxury.

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EMIs, credit cards, and BNPL are masking a deepening reliance on debt, not income.

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The middle class, 31% of India today, will be 60% by 2047—but wealth isn’t growing.

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Welfare cushions the poor. Investments empower the rich. The middle class absorbs the shocks.

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“This isn’t a collapse—it’s a well-dressed decline,” says Singhal. A quiet financial erosion.

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No subsidies. No support. Just rising bills and silence. The middle class is burning.

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