Middle class is not a bad place to be. Most of the literate indians fall in this category. This is the category to which I also belong.
Education, Character & Resourcefulness
Middle class families have a certain set of values that they bring up their kids with. They imbibe in their kids the value of education. I have always been told that education is your passport to success in life.
And this is really a wonderful value that one can aquire for living a good quality of life filled with adventures. Education allows to explore a lot of avenues. You can choose to be whatever you wish. You are not compelled to follow the footsteps of your father or mother.
Equipped with 12 yrs in school life and 3-4 years of college allows you to have sufficient time at your disposal to wonderfully equip yourself for life.
I have been very fortunate in this regard. Though I was born to parents who were born in a rural village, I got the opportunities way beyond my imagination. My mom is only 8th grader and dad 11th grader but they always made sure that I am doing my education fully.
As a result, I was sent to an English medium school. Then went on to live in a big city Bengaluru and do my college studies in a professional field.
The education allows you to see the world properly. You will be able to comprehend the changing trends and the rising new trends. I was fortunate to study in different places that were starkly in contrast with each other.
It allowed me to explore and learn about different types of cultures, food habits, faiths, clothings, languages etc. When you go to a school where you have a friend not from your city or town, he becomes a subject in itself.
There fore the scope of schooling and the education is immense. It is wonderful gift to us from our parents.
The second important value a middle class family inculcates in a person is the importance of character. Middle class is filled with challenges of living in constraints. We learn to economise on everything. We look at our budget before we decide to spend on anything. We learn to respect others and behave well with them.
If we don’t, we won’t be able to develop good relationships that are so important. We struggle to find the best with economy. It teaches us resourcefulness. We call it with a better word in Hindi called jugaad.
Risk Averse, Peer Pressure & fear of failing
Yet we never grow up beyond living a mediocre life. Because we hit a glass ceiling. We don’t allow ourselves to look beyond our comfort zones. Because middle class is risk averse.
We are happy in our little cocoons. Having been blessed with so much, we hardly feel the need to push ourselves well beyond a certain limit.
All our takent is spend on finding a job and not starting an enterprise. Why ? Because of risk. We can’t take risk.
The no 1 reason for not taking risks is the peer pressure. Middle class is very conscious about what the others are thinking and talking about them. They will go to any extent to not look like a fool in other’s eyes.
Apart from fear of losing(risk) and the peer pressure, middle class hates the word failure to the core. For them success is about getting paid every month, being married and having kids, buying their home and moped. And repeating this cycle with their children and so on.
Middle class does not believe in being called a failure. Failure is like a death for them. So, they spend fair amount of their youth in preparing and writing competitive exams. They look at a govt job like a lottery ticket for which they buy lottery tickets every day.
Investing for them is about FDs and RDs, PPFs and Sukanya Samriddhi. They are dreaded by stocks and mutual funds. Forget about starting a business. Only who become insane are going to do business. And such people are stigmatized and traumatised.
As I have spoken both the good and the not so good about the middle classes who you guess I am today?
This is a question that I wish every educated middle class Indian asks himself/herself. There is nothing wrong being middke class. But I see a huge upside being an educated middle class guy.
