The rise of the middle class has been an outstanding feature of the social life of the developed industrial societies. The Indian middle class now deserves serious attention if only because of its great size and diversity. It has grown steadily in size since Independence and particularly in the last couple of decades. At a moderate estimate, it will number 100 million which is more than the total population of any European country (Russia excepted)

The Indian middle class, like the middle class anywhere in the world, is differentiated in terms of occupation, income and education. But the peculiarity in India is its diversity in terms of language, religion and caste. It is by any reckoning the most polymorphous middle class in the world. The problems of the contemporary middle class derive as much from this polymorphy as from its roots in India's colonial experience.

According to B.B. Mishra, the institution required for the growth of capitalism and the potential of a middle class bourgeois development were available in India even  before the arrival of the British. However, the immobility of the caste organisation and the despotism of bureaucracy precluded such a development. Here under the traditional network of the society the middle class element could not become a stratified order. They remained divided into water-tight status groups according to the caste to which they belonged.

Pre Independence period

Middle class began to emerge in India in the middle of the 19th century . The Britishers transplanted into India a new form of government, social and economic organisation to suit to their colonial interest. The British introduced a new educational policy in India with a view to creating a class, which might assist them in administration, and in economic transaction. The quote Macaulay, the founder of British education policy in India, this was to be a class, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and intellect. Thus, the British economic and educational policies planned for the development of a middle class in India to be a class of imitators and not the originators of new values and ideas.

The middle class first emerged in the presidency capitals of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, in law courts, hospitals, banks and offices set up for commercial administrative and other purposes. The backbone of the middle class is a particular kind of occupational system which was new in the 19th century, at least outside the West, but has now become a worldwide phenomenon. It is a highly differentiated system with clerical and other subordinate non-manual occupations, at one end, and superior professional, managerial and administrative ones, at the other.

This middle class has been referred to as old middle class. The old middle class is old in the sense that it originated with the origin of capitalism itself rather in the days of pre-capitalism.  The old middle class consists of small manufacturers, traders, shopkeepers, contractors, artisans, independent professionals e.g. doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants etc., farmers and peasants. This section of middle class not only owns means and tools of production but also work on them. Thus, this class is owner and worker  at the same time. It should be noted that even in modern times the old middle class has been growing and developing of course in new ways. In India the development of urban areas necessarily implies the growth and expansion of the old middle class.

According to B.B. Mishra[1], in the preindependence period , Indian middle classes consisted in the main of the following groups:

There was a sharp rise of the middle class in India with the expansion of education under the British rule. There had been the gradual rise of the joint stock companies, external and internal trade, expansion of the bureaucracy especially the civil service, judiciary and educational service in the British period. All these encouraged the growth of the middle classes.

Post-independence period

In the post-independence period, education, urbanization and industrialization have encouraged the growth of middle class in India. The emergence and expansion of new middle class has been a distinctive feature of Indian society particularly after independence. In post independence period, a number of social categories of personnel associated with the technological scientific and managerial developments have emerged. There is tremendous expansion of non-manual sector in the socio-economic life of modern urban-industrial society. Scientists, technocrats, managers, bureaucrats, white-collar employees and various other professional and technical groups represent the non-manual sector of the urban-industrial society. They are considered the new middle class. Highlighting the significance of this class,  Joshi points out that the new middle class is a most decisive force in the economic, political and social transformation of India since  Independence.

The expansion of the middle class depends upon the commercial, technical, supervisory and managerial elements of economy. It also implies the growth of public services and other professions. The middle class, in a way, is linked with the development of country’s economy, politics, education and technology.

Some features of Indian middle class

1. Duality :The middle class is partly capitalist class and partly working class, or neither capitalist class nor working class. This makes the interplay between the middle class with other two classes complex. This duality of the middle class is due to the fact that the middle class has many vertical and horizontal divisions. The middle class is not a homogeneous class. It is characterised by an internal hierarchy of strata. These different strata of the middle class have different kinds of relationships with other classes. Therefore, some sections of it are closer to working class and some others to capitalist class.
2. In India urban middle class has an imperial legacy. Two important sections of Indian middle classes, state officials and educated professionals, had a special relationship with Britishers and through them with Indian ruling classes. Right from the beginning these constituents of the middle class have remained close to authority and, therefore, constitute a part of the elite.
3. Role of the middle class in social change : The middle class is a product of the dynamic industrial society. The emergence and development of the middle class indicate changes in economy and the class structure of contemporary urban-industrial social life. As pointed out earlier one of the most fundamental features of advanced capitalist society is the middle class of a bigger size. However, the middle class is not only an indicator of social change or the dynamics of contemporary capitalism but also plays a major role in bringing about social change. While explaining the role of the middle class in social change two points have to be taken into consideration-the distinction between the old middle class and the new middle class and the type of society which is being analysed. The middle class, as an agent of modernisation, associates with the class which brings about change in social structure. The middle class in India-particularly lawyers, doctors, teachers and other educated groups have played a significant role in the freedom struggle. The Indian middle class has contributed significantly in inculcating a liberal ethos in Indian society. It is the harbinger of social change through press, media, law, medicine, political ideology and  social activism. Therefore, the middle class has played the leading part in the modernisation of Indian society; without it there would be no modernisation. It is for this reason viewed with mistrust by two kinds of intellectuals: the traditional and the post-modern. The former mistrust the middle class because its ascendance cannot but undermine many elements of the traditional social order, including some beneficial ones. The latter are hostile to it because the middle class is directly and indirectly heir to enlightenment which is gall and wormwood to post-modernism.
4. The middle class is a stabilizing force. Particularly a bigger and extended middle class acts as a buffer between two contending classes and thereby mediates and pacifies class conflict.
5. Caste composition :As pointed out by Mishra, the members of the middle class even today predominantly belong to higher castes. The middle class in India is, therefore, generally elitist. Though of late due to the protective discrimination policy of the government quite a few people belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have also become members of the middle class.
6. Consumerism: According to the 55th round of the National Sample Survey, 1999-2000, 241 million people belonging to the middle class. (23 per cent of total population) accounted for 42 per cent of total consumption expenditure. The average middle class consumption per capita per year works out to Rs 12,546. A little more than 40 per cent of the total consumption of this class is accounted for by the top one third; the `upper middle class', which enjoys an average consumption of Rs 20,196 per capita per year, more than twice as much as the Rs 9,896 average for the `lower middle class'. Leela Fernandes[2] argues that the policies of economic liberalization, initiated in India in the 1990s, have been accompanied by a set of public discourses that have increasingly begun to debate the character of the Indian middle class. On the one hand, proponents of economic liberalization portray the middle class as a sizeable market that should attract multinational corporations. Idealized images of the urban middle class in the print media and television contribute to the production of images of an affluent consumer, who has finally achieved the ability to exercise choice through consumption. On the other hand, critics of liberalization often point to the negative social and cultural effects of consumerism and condemn the middle class for its vulnerability to the excesses of consumerism (Varma, 1998). A number of other studies have recently explored the relationship between economic liberalism and the growth of Indian middle class. S. Lakha in an article ‘The State, Globalization, and the Indian Middle-Class Identity’, 1999 argue that during 1990s and beyond , the Indian middle class has grown as a consequence of the globalization of the economy . With growing consumerism led by economic liberalization, the lifestyles of the ‘new middle class’ on the basis of consumption has become a  new definer of group identity. The same arguments are given by latter studies by  Appadurai & Breckenridge 1995, Scrase 2002; van Wessel, 2004. Ganguly and Scrase, 2003 interestingly comment that Indian middle-class responses to globalization of the economy are contradictory, however: they welcome aspects of cultural globalism embodied in the media, yet they remain highly critical of the uninterrupted entry of foreign capital .
7. In a recent article , the Middle Class Myth in India[3] , Dipankar Gupta has argued that Instead of looking in vain for the middle class, let us ask ourselves what holds up the coming of the middle class in our country? Dipankar Gupta questions the hefty claims of a large middle class in India. He says that definitions of what constitutes the middle and the upper classes are pegged at such low levels that almost anybody can make the grade. Only 3% of Indian households own cars. Only 30 million tax payers in this country and tax is deducted at source for only a third of them. These facts points towards the definitional problems which middle class face in India , especially when Indian middle class in seen in the mirror of middle class of west.