Mani Shankar Iyer used to blast this pressure group in many of his TV Shows. During one such on CWG, he said the games were an ostentatious display of vulgarity for the sake of Indian Middle Class. Forget about the scam, Iyer was right that the choice of venue itself was wrong. That should have been a peripheral city which could have blossomed after staging of the games which is the universal practice in urban development. Government always is wary of increasing price of Domestic LPG because of strong middle class votes. By increasing prices of petrol and Diesel the Government inadvertently troubles a single truck owner and a single Taxi owner who thrives on the vehicle for his livelihood. But they would not touch LPG which takes a huge subsidy in the union budget. 

The spurt in the middle class population happened after the explosive growth of Infosys a Company founded by young professionals who utilised an arbitrage opportunity in services sector to attain phenomenal growth in the name of knowledge based economy. A non descript Computer savvy Rajesh Jain sold his dot com portal for 499 crores to Satyam. If only Edisons, Faradays, Graham Bells, Flexmings of yester years had been as greedy about Intellectual property, life would have been miserable. In the name of IP rights, phenomenal valuations take place. A share of TCS when offered for Initial Public offering sells 990 times the face value where as a PSU like NTPC with prospect of high growth and having huge physical assets sells for only 5.5 time the face value. One can even stretch things a little further that the middle class pressure group has taken the nation's economy as a hostage for their selfish ends and mostly government policies are determined by this group. This group has presence every where. That is why today under Manmohan Singh Bureaucrats have the temerity to dictate terms to elected representatives. What NAC recommends, a Sarkari Babu dismisses Mind you NAC is headed by no less a person of Sonia Gandhi's stature. PM has the tactics of referring all issues to a select of his cronies in some of the committees who are given the right to be dismissive about any social agenda. It is high time we wake up and asset our rights. Middle class if they are existent, whom I would call neo rich have taken from Society more than what they have ever given.