
India has a hole where its middle class should be - pbhowmic
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21734454-should-worry-both-government-and-companies-india-has-hole-where-its-middle-class-should-be
======
thisisit
The article is slightly inflating it's claim. There is a middle class. But,
there are two things which drive markets in India - one is mentioned in the
article, the price and second is utility. Frequent discussions in offices are
about - What is the point of a Starbucks coffee when a "similar" thing can be
had for much less. Phones tend to be measured on music volume or camera.

I have seen Domnios in a tier 3 city. The opening night had a huge crowd and
continued to do so for next 6 months. Then the novelty wore off. Now there are
barely 4-5 people even on a weekend night. People fail to see the point of a
"costly" pizza when 2-3 meals can be had for same price. But, if there is a
grand occasion like birthday, anniversaries people still land up there.

~~~
drieddust
Agreed. Indians are conservative in spending habits and I think that's a good
thing. Eating out is the best example. In West eating out is the default
choice, even those who can't afford it will choose to eat out. On the contrary
in India, eating out is a conscious choice even for very rich.

But I think with new generation, this culture is changing slowly.

~~~
rayiner
It's better to view saving versus spending in economic rather than moralistic
terms. Spending supports production of goods and services in the present,
including the jobs necessary to produce those goods and services. Saving helps
build the capital base that can be used to increase production of goods and
services in the future. In a poor country with a growing population, it makes
sense to save so you can increase production in the future. But in most of the
west, you have the opposite problem. We have more capital than we know what to
do with, and are looking forward to stagnant demand in the future due to a
stable or even decreasing population. In that case, it makes sense to spend
now.

Also, cooking at home doesn’t really make sense from an economic standpoint
when you think about it.[1] Like everything else, cooking has economies of
scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook for many families at once.
It only seems cheaper because we don’t account for the labor and opportunity
cost of the (usually) women who stay home to cook the meals.

[1] Assuming you don't assign an intrinsic positive value to the time spent
cooking or getting a home-cooked meal. That may be true for many people, but
then you're talking about how people relatively value their free time versus
time spent cooking, which is a different issue.

~~~
smallnamespace
> cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook
> for many families at once

But eating out also causes negative externalities because the incentives
between restaurant and food consumer aren't properly aligned.

Restaurants have every incentive to offer cheap, unhealthy, but more addictive
foods because the resulting health issues are externalized towards the buyer
and to the rest of society.

It's this incentive structure that gives rise to Supersized sodas, unlimited
breadsticks at Olive Garden, etc.

One way to look at it is that the industrialization of food production
(including cooking) is better at moving atoms around and making whatever
people choose to eat cheaper, but worse at managing the bits of information
that help people make wise decisions on what they actually _should_ be eating.

It's also harder to verify that you got what you paid for -- my family used to
go to the market every weekend to stock up, and you become intimately familiar
with what's in season, what is fresh, and what tastes good, but it's easy for
a restaurant to buy cut-rate produce and then dress it up with seasoning and
technique.

~~~
Godel_unicode
One interesting side effect of large chains cooking cheap, addictive, shitty
food is that they have cornered that market. At least near me, all of the
small restaurants make excellent food. They appear to know that they can't
compete on price so they compete on quality.

~~~
xg15
But if they go for high price/high quality, we've come full circle and cooking
at home is cheaper again.

~~~
etruong42
It has already been quoted before so I'll quote it again:

> cooking has economies of scale and specialization, so it’s cheaper to cook
> for many families at once

I'll try to add a little more value to the conversation - there are a lot of
hidden costs in cooking at home. A kitchen could take up valuable real estate
that is significantly underutilized compared to a commercial kitchen. A
personal kitchen also has maintenance costs on top of cooking and cleaning
each meal.

I do acknowledge a lot of value - you get to cook exactly what you want, how
you want, when you want. For many, cooking itself is valuable (and not a loss
of time) because it is enjoyable.

------
l33tbro
I'm sure the neocons would probably write this off as India being in the early
stages of of Kuznets Curve (1), but it's probably a case of what Piketty found
when writing 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'. Ie, in developed nations,
the rate of return on capital greater exceeds the rate of economic growth,
which creates an increasing gap between rich and poor.

It's difficult to see how they will mobilise these people to become consumers,
when nothing suggests a disruption of Indian wealth becoming increasingly
concentrated.

(1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve)

~~~
anovikov
What is the problem of wealth being concentrated? Common people do not need
wealth to earn money, they earn money from jobs. Gradually business will see
it needs consumers to grow further and some measures will be taken to make
these people more productive to be able to earn and spend, as rich don't exist
in a vacuum.

~~~
tekmate
i could actually respect libertarians if you guys would stop pretending that
trickle down is a thing and embraced that a society with .1% superrich, 19-20%
well off experts and 80% serfs is the natural endgame of your ideology

~~~
jeffbax
Don't blame libertarianism for the state having broken the market so badly
that wealth inevitably gets funneled to the few. Crony capitalism is not
libertarian, rabidly competitive markets are.

The natural end of that is generally going to be prosperity across the board,
and hopefully a government financially solvent enough to actually pay for
those in need and essential services, all of which should be lower as a result
of a better market doing much of that naturally.

~~~
xixixao
I have never seen even a simple argument for why your second paragraph should
be true.

On the other hand I understand the principle that money makes more money (the
principle of investment and ROI), and I don't see how "competitive market"
tackles this.

It basically feels like the capitalism starts off from fairly-level playing
field, but over time becomes more and more unstable, the gap ever-widening. We
have already seen it fall (at the beginning of communist regimes), and I'm
afraid we'll see it fall again.

That's a pessimist view, which I hope won't turn out to be true, but I'd be
interested in exploring alternatives.

~~~
cloverich
> the principle that money makes more money (the principle of investment and
> ROI), and I don't see how "competitive market" tackles this.

It doesn't address that because it doesn't make that argument, in that way.
One of its starting axioms is that economy is a positive sum game. In the case
of your statement, it might argue that (in the very general sense) money makes
more money in a positive sum way -- more total wealth in the economy. Then to
the latter it merely says that business that are better at making money (and
generally, wealth) get to out compete those that don't. Its premise is it
optimizes for wealth creation of the entire economy. I think that's the place
to take the argument -- either that you fundamentally disagree with that
premise or some outcome of it.

> It basically feels like the capitalism starts off from fairly-level playing
> field

Historically I don't think so. I"m not expert but read a lot and I'm currently
under the impression that economies were historically locked down by
government or tightly coupled government / mercantile entities.

~~~
fineng123
> Historically I don't think so.

WWII was a great leveling of the playing field. There are many times in
history when Gini coefficients dropped precipitously. All the evidence points
to the fact that wealth tends to accumulate in capitalist economies until
crises or government intervention prevents it.

------
IkmoIkmo
Here's a pretty decent technical note which covers definitions and quantifies
'middle class' in India:
[https://www.cgdev.org/doc/2013_MiddleClassIndia_TechnicalNot...](https://www.cgdev.org/doc/2013_MiddleClassIndia_TechnicalNote_CGDNote.pdf)

Most data that I'm familiar with is from the National Survey of Household
Income and Expenditure (NSHIE) by the NCAER, or the NSS by the gov. But they
hold these surveys rarely, I'm hoping to see an update to the 2011 NSHIE data
for example, this year.

Another decent study building on NSHIE data:
[http://www.thesuniljain.com/files/thirdparty/NCAER%20How%20I...](http://www.thesuniljain.com/files/thirdparty/NCAER%20How%20India%20Earns%20Spends%20and%20Saves.pdf)

Does anyone know where to get more recent data?

In any case, the middle class in India is quite small, probably around 100m
people, but definitely not above 200m. What's somewhat left unsaid by the
Economist is that growth prospects are pretty good, with the middle class
group doubling less than every decade, in addition to growth of the rich
group.

India will also be this century's most populous country, outgrowing China
probably next decade and will keep growing a few decades after China's
population will have started shrinking. And looking at the age-demographics,
China is headed into difficult territory whereas India will have mostly young
(i.e. productive) population for a long time.

So I agree with most of this article, but it definitely also leaves a few
things unsaid. In terms of India's attractiveness as a new global market, I'm
cautiously more optimistic about India's position than most, but not by much.

------
lappet
I don't know how to better put this, but the Economist comes off as very
condescending whenever it talks about countries not in the West. India doesn't
have a hole where its middle class should be - it is just smaller than what
you would expect for a country of its size. I grew up in India and probably
went from lower middle class to a upper middle class with time. The Indian
middle class is not on par with with the American middle class - they can be
much poorer, and have different priorities and often span a wide spectrum. And
to be honest, I don't see why rampant consumerism is good for any society.
India has a huge native market for Indian consumers - it is the fact that so
many people cannot afford those goods is appalling.

~~~
debt
The argument they’re making is that those people should be able to afford
those goods and the fact that they cannot at this point in time means there’s
a massive hole where there should be a middle class.

This assessment seems to suggest that either the Indian economy has stalled or
there’s rampant corruption or both or something else altogether entirely.

It seems they’re merely making an observation.

~~~
pm90
Speaking as someone who grew up in India, I've noticed a very real lack of
understanding of non-western countries by Western media (specifically India,
but I'm guessing if there is so much misunderstanding about an English
speaking country, probably more so about other non-English speaking ones). I
was rather appalled by articles in NYT, Times and Economist in particular.
Sometimes even BBC, although that usually got it mostly right.

I have noticed that NYT has become a LOT better in its coverage of India
recently. I wonder if that's because they've hired quality talent in the
country? Whatever the reason, I'm glad for that change.

~~~
therealdrag0
Care to elaborate what sorts of lack of understanding you see?

------
neel8986
Entire benefit of globalization in India has only reached the top 10% (or
maybe 1%). If you think about Indian exports it is mostly concentrated in IT
and high skill crafts like jewelry. Only a few Indians can take benefit of
that.

What we need is a system which can mass export cheap goods like clothes or
shoes. China and Korea have crawled out of poverty by following this simple
formula of exporting cheap goods which need some basic skills.

But sadly even Indias much smaller neighbor like Bangladesh is doing far
better in such sectors. Archaic labor laws are still holding back India in
mass manufacturing

~~~
statguy
Automation is rapidly closing that window.

------
otalp
>The fact that barely a quarter of women work—a share that has seen a
precipitous decline in the past decade

Wait, fewer women are working in India over time? Why is that?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
They say it's a smaller share, which doesn't necessarily mean fewer women,
depending on what is counted as "work".

It could be (I'm just guessing here), that the type of work that men do has
been "legalized" (and hence counted) to a much greater extent than the type of
work that women predominantly do.

~~~
satya71
Most people in India work in the informal sector and are not counted.

~~~
denzil_correa
That also means these most people won’t have acceptable work conditions and
other employee rights that the formal sector has.

~~~
tomrod
Or they work on farms, or they build crafts as craftsmen/craftswomen in their
own workshops, etc. Definition is very broad.

------
ravirajx7
Few points which i would like to add:

1\. India does have very large middle class population and most of their
income is unaccounted.

2\. Majority of middle class Indians who belong to certain religion/caste hide
their income so as to get many freebies and reservation benefits.

3\. Very few rich individuals pay taxes and file correct income tax return.
Government is very much responsible for this as filling a simple itr form
consist of many different sections and people avoid getting into official
paperwork.

4\. Though poor people are given various subsidies on paper but because of
lack of education they barely know all the scehmes running around them and
politicians eat most of their money.

5\. Longer judicial proceedings make it even more tough for the system to
catch corrupt individuals and implement good policies.

~~~
statguy
> Very few rich individuals pay taxes and file correct income tax return.
> Government is very much responsible for this as filling a simple itr form
> consist of many different sections and people avoid getting into official
> paperwork.

the complexity of the form is not the reason people avoid paying taxes -
people don't pay taxes because they can get away with it.

~~~
ravirajx7
> People don't pay taxes because they can get away with it.

This certainly is one of the reason behind hiding income. But majority of the
middle class don't even file itr 1 form (for income below 2.5 lakhs per annum
). For filling an itr 1 form, people don't need to pay any tax.

Though people are not paying taxes but the money is being accounted and my
point here is that of accountability.

However, if the income was recorded the analysis of stats could have been done
more efficiently.

------
juanmirocks
From my very subjective experience, and my long trip around India in 2017, I
can agree on all points raised by the Economist article.

The state of education is appalling. And yet at the same time, you see tons of
those in the low 90% of the population checking out Facebook in their cheap
phones with 4G connectivity.

Either way, my outlook for India is very positive. IMO They need only 1 or 2
more generations to truly rival or even surpass China.

~~~
fineng123
Too religious. China's great advantage is that they're all atheists.

Highly religious societies have a strong desire for tradition, and tradition
is "women don't work and have no power, corruption is rampant, new things are
bad (because they destroy the golden geese that keep the upper class rich and
in power)". Pakistan and India are going nowhere soon.

~~~
farazbabar
As an ex pakistani, I have always admired how much India has been able to
overcome the odds and continues to prosper and charge forward. I think the gp
has some merit in hoping that within a generation or two, India has a chance
to overcome a number of these challenges. I do concur with your assessment of
Pakistan however.

~~~
pm90
This is actually very sad. I had hoped the economic development would change
society in Pakistan as much as it has changed it in India; perhaps that would
finally end the enmity that exists b/w the countries. My Parents generation
cared very much about Caste/Religion etc. while my friends and I are very much
secular, and I imagine the next generation will be even more so.

------
billfruit
The governance in India has stagnated and haven't kept pace with changing
times. I thing the problem is its half-born federal structure. Without the
states having sufficient power to enact meaningful policy, there is little or
no competition between the states, because of the fact that there is barely
anything to differentiate between them.

~~~
fineng123
The problem is religion. That's why there's too many people (birth control is
evil and God doesn't want it, etc.), and that's why they have a lazy culture.

~~~
dimmuborgir
There is no 'birth control is evil' concept in Hinduism. 80% Indians are
Hindus. Poverty is the reason for there being too many people. Poor people
tend to have more children.

~~~
fineng123
Pulling out is specifically prohibited in the Bible. So is oral sex. But
nobody gives a shit. The funny thing about religion is that there's so much
nonsense in their official texts that you can make it mean whatever you want
:)

~~~
dang
Religious flamewar is not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do
this, so please don't do it.

------
itissid
How does one go figuring out income levels? India has such a poor tax base
just 2%[1] of people pay taxes.

> If nearly 300m Indians count as “middle class”, as HSBC has proclaimed, some
> of them make around $3 a day.

Then, I would be curious to know how one accurately is someone "measuring"
what a middle class is since only 2% of the population sample is available.

[1][https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/03/22/517965630/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/03/22/517965630/why-
do-so-few-people-pay-income-tax-in-india)

~~~
statguy
There are other ways of arriving at it, apart from tax-filings, such as
cars/electronics/consumer goods purchased.

~~~
itissid
It is hard though Car owner ship is < 2% in india[1] And Cars is probably the
second most expensive asset after a home (assuming stock and bonds are not
really owned by that many people).

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/40422065/inside-indias-plans-
to-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40422065/inside-indias-plans-to-leapfrog-
the-western-model-of-car-ownership)

------
thallukrish
We need more middle class people who are educated to come into political
stream to counter the existing political class which caters to the rich and
the poor. Then things my change for the better.

------
pankajdoharey
The state of indian population is so abysmal and all Modi/Shah/yogi talk about
is Ram temple, construction of Statue of religious figurines, hindu muslim
love affairs, national vs anti national and other such non sense. such a shame
on the government.

------
3of90s
Govt of India spends less than 1.5% of its GDP on education and an equal share
on its health. Now compare this with shares of other countries like US and
European countries. Indians save money (who ever can save) to take care of
these.

------
qwerty456127
How does it happen India has Gini coefficient close to that of Canada (and
better tan that of the USA, UK and even Australia) then?

~~~
microcolonel
It could be that Gini coefficients don't make that much sense in general,
especially since you can skew the numbers in favour of "equality" simply by
having more poor people. There are alternative measures of income inequality,
but they seem not to be used basically at all by the broader public.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
What? If there are more or all poor people with largely equal income, then I
would say the country is equal. Even the top 1% holds much less in India as
compared to US[1].

[1]: [http://www.thehindu.com/business/income-share-of-
top-1-surge...](http://www.thehindu.com/business/income-share-of-top-1-surged-
report/article21665296.ece)

------
oarla
This article is very weird. It's written by someone in a first world country,
presumably USA, for companies based in West(Amazon, Starbucks , IKEA etc) on
how to monetize in India. The primary complain is that India doesn't have
enough people who can spend money on certain luxuries, when compared to China.

I find it hard to believe that companies had to make only minor tweaks to
their business model to succeed in China.

For ex, Amazon is making a "killing" in China, by doing exactly what it did to
bolster it's business in USA. [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-is-
struggling-to-find-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-is-struggling-
to-find-its-place-china-2017-8)

It's no wonder that businesses have to adapt to local markets. Lamenting that
there are too many poor people is a bad idea, because as many comments here
have mentioned, it's a different mindset in India when it comes to spending
than the West.

If companies can adapt to break into the market, let them. But claiming that
its not worth it, would be a bad choice.

------
GreeniFi
By design or a bug in the system?

~~~
lotsofpulp
It seems inevitable in a system where owners of capital reap all the benefits
of automation and efficiency. Since most people do not own sufficient capital,
they get less and less of the pie.

~~~
jacobush
Oh. The west’s middle class will vanish too, soon enough.

~~~
lotsofpulp
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/business/worl...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/business/world-
inequality.html)

Take your pick of the data.

~~~
jacobush
"If you care about equity, it doesn’t look good."

------
known
Could be due to
[http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-...](http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When-
will-the-BrahminBania-hegemony-end.html)

------
MechEStudent
The US is moving that direction too.

------
YetAnotherNick
To most of the comments here, inequality is not the same as poverty. Everyone
agrees India is poor, but most stats(except this) don't support India has too
much inequality for its league.

------
naruvimama
A movies has been made out of the aspirational eating out part

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSt5_uw49Mc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSt5_uw49Mc)

------
senatorobama
Sad. As an NRI, I keep thinking about moving back to India to help improve the
situation of my homeland.

~~~
ravivooda
No worries! History teaches us that people do move from destitute to better
situations. India is sure as hell a gigantic mammoth task, but not giving up.

Unless you have kids, I would suggest you to try moving back and attempt a
helping hand. If we fail, we can again look for other opportunities. Just a
personal perspective.

~~~
senatorobama
Are there any promising startups in India working on anti-poverty, anti-hunger
schemes?

~~~
pm90
There are, but I don't think you should be seeking them unless you are willing
to take a significant hit in your quality of life.

Generally speaking, Western economies compensate much better for being highly
educated or advanced scientific/engineering skillsets. The rule of thumb I've
come up with, after talking about it a lot with other NRI's, is to go back
only if you really "love" your home city/country etc. e.g. my cousin went back
because he simply wouldn't be happy if he couldn't visit the extended family
at least once a month (i.e. very lonely) and really missed the food.

If you go back and work in a job you don't like, YOU will be unhappy. That is
perhaps the most important factor in making these decisions... you cannot help
others unless you are yourself happy and content.

------
dafty4
Sounds like a very interesting article, but could you modify the title to
include '[paywall]'? I realize that paid news is the way things are going, but
we don't have to give paywalls free clicks, do we?

------
throwaway00123
The Indian 'middle class', is composed generally of descendents (literal
and/or otherwise) of the old Angrezi babus who were colonizing the country for
the British, and thus are extremely wealthy (in relative terms) since they
control the system. The system has itself became self-sustaining in a big way
after 'independence', and thus continuing the large-scale inequity, often
entirely along linguistic lines (English vs rest).

No wonder, everything, including the highest courts continue to be run by the
(cultural) Anglical retainers. It's almost amusing when FabIndia + Bindi
wearing bimbos (faureign/desi) come and lecture about the 'caste system'. This
is the market demographic that the Americans are so keen to tap into; the
other neither has much wealth nor is it culturally Anglo-Saxon (and thus
American recipes are not transplantable, effective, or profitable).

~~~
yedava
The fact is that the well off in India come from traditionally "upper" castes.
Linguistically speaking too (like English speakers), the caste correlation is
quite strong. Even among the non-English speaking rich (like wealthy farmers
in the rural areas), the same caste correlation pops up. In a country where
upwards of 90% of marriages are within the same caste[1], wealth accrued to
certain castes stays within them (a self-sustaining system). So it shouldn't
be surprising to see caste used an explanation for inequality.

1\. [http://www.thehindu.com/data/just-5-per-cent-of-indian-
marri...](http://www.thehindu.com/data/just-5-per-cent-of-indian-marriages-
are-intercaste/article6591502.ece#)!

~~~
gaius
It’s not about who speaks English but about who was born Brahmin - that’s been
true in India for 5000 years!

India couldn’t function as a modern state with out a de jure lingua franca,
that being English is an enormous advantage for international trade too.

~~~
tiuPapa
Not true. The fascination with Brahmin has been replaced with the Rich quite a
while back. Not saying that there is no cast discrimination in India, there
is. But being born Brahmin is not as big an advantage today as it was in the
past. Being born rich however is a different story.

~~~
pm90
Caste still matters in rural areas, not so much in urban ones. But most of
India is still rural, so I would say that statistically, Caste is still a very
big deal.

------
deepGem
I'd be hard pressed to believe that 40% of Indians are on par with the most
destitute bits of Africa. Any source to validate this ?

~~~
RandomCSGeek
I live in India, so I can give a bit of overview. I don't have sources right
now, but I have experience.

You can roughly divide India into two parts, the British controlled, and the
non-British controlled, based on the pre-independence situation.

The british controlled areas, mainly the northern states like UP, bihar,
bengal have huge number of poor families. UP has too many people, and most of
them are poor.

The non British controlled ares, like Maharashtra and some southern states,
are generally a bit better off, and here is where you find most rich and
middle class.

The central states are riddled with decades old insurgency, which could be
solved using military, but govt doesn't want to use military on it's own
people. These areas contain tribal people, and they are very poor.

Now, all this is not a perfect science, but this is how it generally is. Now
when a foreigner visits India, he/she might visit places like Delhi, Mumbai,
Bangalore, maybe North eastern Himalayan areas, Goa and some beaches in
Lakshadweep. The image you get is that of extremely rich people and extremely
poor people, along with a lot of middle-class people living in these cities.

But outside these cities, when you go to central India(you won't, as rebels
will kidnap you), you can see extreme poverty. Same with other non-tourist
areas.

~~~
sumedh
70 years after independence and you are still blaming the british.

When will this finger pointing stop?

~~~
ravivooda
I wonder, if you will agree, the rich always have an advantage compared to the
poor. In terms of education, better life etc. So I can see why we blame
British; the parts where they were most effective are factually poor when
compared to the other side.

Not in any way mean that we should blame them even after 70 years.

~~~
sumedh
> So I can see why we blame British

We blame Britain because it's easier to have scapegoats, it's much harder to
acknowledge failure and actually fix the problems.

------
throwaway21442
Poor article, even by the already low standards of The Economist. In effect,
trying to tell business leaders they don't understand their market as well as
the Economist column-writers do.

> Firms peddling anything much beyond soap, matches and phone-credit are
> targeting a minuscule slice of the population

Well, yes, but tell us something new. Even this minuscule slice is (a) A large
market and (b) is growing quite rapidly. For example:

Automobiles: growing at around 6% p.a, shifting towards more expensive models.
Now 4th largest in the world in terms of numbers (no doubt, lower in total $
sales)[1]

Smartphones: 2nd biggest in the world [2]

Consumer Durables: growing at over 10% [3]

Business leaders are not interested in India because they're stupid and they
think India is a rich, egalitarian country. They are interested because of a
fast rising middle class with a booming consumer economy, which, contrary to
the claims of the article, is true. For millions of people like myself, who
emerged into the middle class thanks to private sector jobs that only emerged
after the 90s, this is lived experience.

For a much better take on the topic, please read:

[https://swarajyamag.com/economy/demonetisation-how-neo-
middl...](https://swarajyamag.com/economy/demonetisation-how-neo-middle-class-
is-redefining-political-landscape)

[1][http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/india-trumps-
germa...](http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/india-trumps-germany-uk-
to-become-the-fourth-largest-auto-market-in-the-world-2322935.html)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/27/india-second-largest-
smart...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/27/india-second-largest-smartphone-
market/)

[3] [https://www.ibef.org/industry/consumer-durables-
presentation](https://www.ibef.org/industry/consumer-durables-presentation)

