Wake up India! It is time to break the fast with Kellogs cornflakes, toast made from Premium Harvest Gold Bread spread with Suncrest Margarine and Good Earth Marmalade, and wash it all down with Dabur Orange Juice. Then step into your designer wear and Woodland shoes, take a Tata Sierra, Daewoo Cielo, Esteem or even an India-assembled Mercedes Benz into your centrally air-conditioned office tower where a stunning woman executive wafts by turning heads with her brand name soap or perfume, and the boss appreciates you for using an upmarket nasal decongestant. Then return home to a happily Life-Insured smiling wife and kids, a healthy meal cooked in Sunflower oil, a Sleepwell mattress and contour pillow and, not to forget, sweet-smelling mosquito mat. Sit back, relax, and watch commercials advertising all of the above on your domestic cable system.
Trite, banal, but true. This is the 250 million-strong Indian middle class and its conspicuous consumption as promoted by television, which is received in 70 percent of households nationally. The new post-liberalisation mantra coined for the Indian middle class says: "Consume, consume, consumer According to a recent economic report, the middle classes ate an annual 38,000 tonnes of potato chips countrywide, dusted themselves with 15,100 tonnes of talcum powder, drank 2880 million bottles of soft drinks, and flew 10 million times a year. They are even buying themselves watches which cost between INR 20,000 to INR 100,000.
Earnings have been going up for both the upper and lower middle-income groups. Successive good monsoons and supportive government policies have led to an 11 percent growth rate among rural lower middle income groups while liberalisation policies and revised salary structures after the opening up of the economy in the 1990s has led to a whopping 18 percent growth rate among upper middle income groups.
There is a rush to acquire status, which is ensured only by material possessions and costly services. The new lust for top-notch brand names and other necessary accessories of status have international companies rushing in where they earlier feared to tread. Pierre Cardin, Sony, Omega, Reebok, Adidas are all positioning themselves in the knowledge that this is just the beginning.