Middle Class, Media and Modi: The Making of a New Electoral Politics

The spectacular victory of Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2014 and again in 2019 demands a nuanced exploration of the factors that led to it. Though the role of the middle class and the media in the making of what is called the ‘Modi Wave’ is often talked about, a clear-eyed and unbiased look at how they transformed the political landscape in post-liberalization India is still wanting. This book studies how the Indian middle class, once seen as politically indifferent, has gradually become a player of importance. This change, which slowly began in the 1990s, has now reached a crescendo, and Modi has become the icon of the changing economic demands of the middle class and their ideological rightward shift. The new middle class played a decisive role in the electoral outcomes of 2014 and 2019—two elections that have undoubtedly changed the way India imagines itself and how the rest of the world sees India. Modi’s management of mainstream and social media—primary consumers of which is the ever-growing middle class—has played a key role in his emphatic victories. This book will help the reader understand the arsenal that Modi used in these elections and is a must-read for scholars of politics, media studies and sociology.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by R. S. Deshpande Acknowledgements Introduction: Middle Class, Media and Modi: Ascending the Power Steps The Nebulous Domain of the Middle Class Indian Middle Class: British Raj to Post-Emergency Birth of New Middle Class during Liberal Raj Middle Class, Media and BJP Middle Class and Narendra Modi Maneuvering the Middle Class Managing the Unmanageable: Media and Modi Modi’s Ride to Power on Social Media Epilogue Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Nagesh Prabhu is a political analyst and currently Deputy Editor at The Hindu, Bengaluru, India. He is the author of the book Reflective Shadows: Political Economy of World Bank Lending to India (2017). He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. Dr Prabhu did his master’s in political science from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 1990 and MPhil from Mangalore University in 1994. He has been an active journalist for 25 years and writes regularly on issues related to political economy. Before taking up journalism, he taught for a brief period in Mangalore University. His articles have been published in academic journals as well.

Review :
This book traces the remarkable ascendency of the Indian middle class over time, particularly following liberalization since the early 1990s. It establishes the intersection of the middle class, media and Modi phenomenon in India and highlights the reasons for their sanguine overlap. While being appreciative of the shift in Indian politics with the entry of Modi, it scrupulously avoids adulation which a section of the Indian media has indulged in recent years.  Nagesh Prabhu has tackled a timely and understudied topic in this book. Modi’s successful campaigns have used effective aspirational strategies to draw support from both India’s middle classes and social groups aspiring to gain the middle-class status. This book provides an extremely valuable study of these dynamics. It provides a critical resource for anyone interested in understanding India’s middle classes and contemporary politics in India.   Understanding and explaining the rise of the BJP from the prism of the emerging new middle class is the focus of this book. While a lot of the analysis on the rise and growth of the BJP and its current leadership has been from the perspectives of caste, identity politics, leadership and the multiple contours of Hindutva, this book weaves an analysis that is refreshingly new, privileging a focus on the role of the middle class in India. The author persuasively draws a linkage between Modi’s rise to power, the role of the media in this regard and the increasing space that the middle class has come to occupy in electoral politics.   "The highpoint of the book is that it traces the role of the middle class in nation-building during the Nehru and Indira Gandhi regimes… an indispensable read."  "The author presents a rich narrative of the history of the middle class not just in India but also the world by alluding to important literatures, its role in democracy, movements, nation-building and so on." "The book painstakingly sketches an unbiased picture of a very complex story — of how the middle class transformed the political landscape in post-liberalisation India." "Middle Class, Media and Modi remains a timely intervention as it looks into the role of the middle class and the media from the perspective of BJP and Narendra Modi… a valuable addition to books about Indian politics."