There is a class of Indian society perennially obsessed with the question, ‘what will foreigners think of us.’ Their complaint is that representatives of our country abroad do not have the etiquette and style expected of the truly well-bred and well-educated. They cringe when they watch a debate between an Indian and a Pakistani on foreign television channels like CNN and BBC. Their unhappiness is not so much with the content of the Indian’s argument, but that the Pakistani looks more suave and polished with his Saville Row suit, gelled hair and Oxbridge accent, compared to the Indian with his middle class mannerisms, desi accent and shiny safari suit. This class even makes snide references to Abdul Kalam’s LMC (lower middle class) origin and style and compares him unfavourably with the more sophisticated heads of state of some other countries. The term LMC coined by Delhi’s fashionable PLUs (people like us) has a disparaging and patronising tone. It conjures up someone whose English accent is not up to scratch; who says ‘liar’ when he means ‘lawyer’ and refers to his ‘career’ prospects as if he was talking of an aircraft ‘carrier.’ Someone who picks up his clothes from the Lajpat Nagar main market rather than going for designer labels or ethnic chic kurtas. Someone who is unsophisticated enough about his travels abroad to display his purchases on his drawing room mantle piece and puts plastic flowers in his vase. But while the snobbish PLUs deplore the growing presence of LMCs at all levels of society, their increasing numbers as key decision-makers is, in fact, one of our republic’s greatest achievements. It reflects the spread of egalitarianism in our society. Particularly when compared with our immediate neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan, where feudalism still prevails and the ruling elite is largely restricted to a select few families. Prominent people from such countries may be more familiar with the finer points of etiquette — such as whether the finger bowl at the Rashtrapati Bhavan banquet was for washing hands or the fruit — but they are hardly typical of the societies they represent. Our next president’s life story should be a source of pride, not concern. The son of a poor boatman, he was the first in his family to attend college and his sister had to hawk her jewelry to raise his college fees. His education was entirely in his own country — Kalam does not sport any of the fancy foreign degrees our PLUs consider so essential a part of the finishing process. K.R. Narayanan was from an equally deprived background. The son of a Dalit ayurved doctor, he had to struggle to pay for his middle school education and graduated from college and later the London School of Economics through scholarships. If one examines the backgrounds of our 10 past presidents, one finds a large number of them came from LMC families. What is more, the LMC presidents, like Zail Singh and K.R. Narayanan, generally displayed greater initiative and courage in questioning the actions of government, whereas those from affluent families with an Ivy League education abroad, like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, were extremely pliant. In the political arena, if Pakistan has its Bhutto and Sharif dynasties, we too have our share of Gandhis, Abdullahs, Badals and Scindias. The difference is that, despite the dynasties, most of our politicians belong to the LMC and have climbed up the greasy pole thanks to their own sweat, caste kinship and capacity for intrigue. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is the son of a school teacher and a poet of very modest means. Bihar regent and former chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav comes from a humble shepherd’s family who once thought the ultimate thing to do was to be recruited as a police constable. Laloo moved from the veterinary college peon’s quarters where his brother lived, to the chief minister’s mansion in Patna. Mayawati, a former elementary school teacher who aspired to join the IAS, triumphed over the triple handicap of gender, caste and modest means to become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The dynamism, vigour and motivation of the lower middle class is exemplified by the phenomenal success of the late Dhirubhai Ambani. The son of a school teacher from Chorwad village in Gujarat who did not complete high school, Ambani knew from personal experience the meaning of struggle. He worked for seven years as a petrol pump attendant in Aden and later as a yarn dealer in Mumbai he lived in a two room tenement with a family of seven. Ambani changed the parameters of Indian industry and the share market, shoving aside the complacent, monopolistic, plutocratic old business families like the Tatas, Wadias and Singhanias to create India’s largest business group. His unauthorised biographer Hamish McDonald described him as an ‘‘iconoclastic poster boy of a new India: Brash, fierce, pushing his way up from the bottom.’’ Fifty years ago, officers of the Indian Army came from the country’s social elite; several boasted of blue blooded connections. Today, around half of our officers are the sons of NCOs (non commissioned officers) and JCOs (junior commissioned officers), certainly a more egalitarian break-up than the armies in the rest of the subcontinent. We can take justifiable pride in the fact that our last army chief General V.P. Malik was the son of a JCO, something unimaginable in the Pakistani Army. A recent study of the backgrounds of those who qualified for the all-India services and central services between 1998 and 2002 shows that an overwhelming majority were from the lower middle class. Twenty two per cent were from lower income families whose annual income was less than Rs 36,000; 34 per cent from middle income families with an annual income between Rs 36,000 and Rs 96,000; 29 per cent belonged to the upper middle income and only 15 per cent came from the high income bracket.
