BJP bets big on middle class, 31% of population

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, April 14

Eyeing a historic third consecutive win in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling BJP has bet big on the middle class, promising to create vast supportive networks to ease the life of this population group.

Apart from focusing on the poor and the deprived, the BJP manifesto promises to help the middle class realise their dream of owning a house.

The middle class is the fastest growing major segment of the Indian population in both percentage and absolute terms, rising at 6.3 per cent between 1995 and 2021.

Government data show the middle class today represents 31 per cent of the Indian people and will represent 38 per cent by 2031 and 60 per cent by 2047, forming a formidable pressure bloc.

This explains the BJP’s rationale behind moving the middle class families several notches up in their poll priority segment list in comparison to 2019 when the top focus was “nation first followed by farmers and economy”.

In the manifesto, covering 24 sectors for deep focus in the next five years, poor families top the list followed by middle class families, who will represent a major thrust area of Modi 3.0 should the BJP return to power.

The BJP manifesto promises for this segment include easing of laws to enable them to own houses; creation of high value jobs through support in tier 2 and 3 cities; establishment of more medical colleges apart from 315 set up in 10 years; more technical institutions; creation of Super App (an application to inform train travellers of entire schedules and timings of passenger trains), and provision of piped natural gas across all major cities and towns to reduce the cost of cooking.

“New passenger trains will be added in the next five years to eliminate the current system of wait lists. Already in the past 10 years, we have added 31,000 km of new railway lines. The importance of this data can be judged by the fact that the entire railway network of Germany consists of 35,000 km. In the last year alone, we added 5,000 km of new railway lines, which is the size of the rail network of Switzerland, an entire nation. A significant number of new trains will be added in the next five years — Vande Bharat passenger trains, sleeper trains, metros as also a bullet train for each zone (north, east, west and south),” a top BJP source said today, detailing the plans to improve the lives of neo-middle classes and middle classes.

Even the BJP’s anti-graft push is aimed at wooing the middle classes with PM Narendra Modi today saying he would continue acting against the corrupt because “corruption denies the poor and the middle classes their due rights and benefits”.

BJP sources say they believe the PM’s anti-corruption stand appeals most to the middle classes and would be a major factor as they cast their vote in the seven-phase 2024 Lok Sabha elections from April 19 to June 1.

India’s Fastest growing segment

The middle class is the fastest growing segment of the Indian population, projected to make up 60 per cent of our people by 2047

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