Is ₹70 lakh a 12 months nonetheless “center class” in India? That query, raised in a podcast by Rahul Jain, has reignited a deeper debate round rising incomes, social media pressures, and the parable of the fashionable Indian center class. And in line with the CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, the reply is blunt: it’s not.
“What we now prefer to name center class is sort of cool,” she mentioned throughout a dialog with Jain. “The fact is—none of us are center class. The technical definition of center class can’t be ₹70 lakh of earnings. ₹70 lakh is higher class.”
For a lot of city professionals, nonetheless, even seven-figure salaries really feel insufficient. With skyrocketing hire, life-style inflation, and infinite comparisons on social media, there’s a rising sentiment that no wage feels sufficient. However the Edelweiss CEO sees that as a part of a broader identification disaster, the place Indians incomes within the high percentiles nonetheless cling to a “center class” label due to their upbringing.
“All of us come from center class roots. We have now center class psychosis, center class considering, grandparents who had been center or decrease center class,” she mentioned. “We maintain that phrase very pricey to us. However let’s be actual—most of us are usually not center class anymore.”
She pegs the precise center class earnings vary in India at simply ₹5–8 lakh a 12 months, not ₹70 lakh. And in a rustic of 140 crore individuals, she factors out, attempting to use one common to all is “meaningless.” About 10 crore individuals have a per capita earnings of $12,000–$14,000, she famous, whereas over 100 crore dwell at underneath $2,000 a 12 months.
What complicates issues additional is how social media shapes fashionable aspirations—and dissatisfaction. “I spoke to a Gen Z child,” she mentioned, “and requested why they’re proof against 60–70 hour work weeks. He mentioned, ‘We have now to go to the gymnasium, preserve health, take holidays—as a result of we’re competing on social media.’”
That public comparability, she added, amplifies monetary nervousness. “The battle between saving and spending at all times existed. However immediately, it’s exaggerated.”
So whereas ₹70 lakh is objectively a excessive earnings, the psychological and social notion of “not having sufficient” persists.
