The Middle-Class Dream

 The Middle-Class Dream

 ~by Priya Jyoti

The Middle-Class Dreams of India.

It is often said that there is no pain, no gain, but that gain has so much to make you forget your pain. To chase your dreams, you have to leave lots of things behind. When we make decisions about our career and goals, we think of all the possible ways to lead a comfortable and stress-free life. There comes a phase in life where most people who are seeking an opportunity to take a step forward to fulfil their dreams indulge in an awful conversation with their parents, and sometimes they feel embarrassed to even talk about the same. In India, for a middle class family child, thinking about how much a job can offer is more important than what a job can give you to explore your ideas or creativity. Here, a student thinks about paying back EMIs and loans more than planning trips with friends. Waiting for public transportation, standing in long lines, managing daily expenses, and avoiding favourite foods because of financial problems are all common sights. Most of the time, a student who belongs to this region of society has to sacrifice his/her dream to have a secure financial present and future. It’s a part of society that is in the majority and is neglected by many of us. We either talk about poverty or give attention to prosperity, but what about this middle section where a student finds himself/herself struggling between the upper and lower class? Hundreds of stories and dreams of middle-class people go unnoticed and thus circulate among us like air, which we know exists but avoid.

The potent driver of our Indian economy, i.e., the middle class, is rising, and by 2025, it will reach a population of 583 million, which is almost 41% of India’s current population and almost twice the population of the United States. Soon, India will become the country with the largest middle class. In such a country, where the middle section is in the majority, each door has many dreams, and most of these are finding their way difficult to achieve their destination. When an Indian middle class child places his dream in front of their parents of becoming an actor or director or painter or writer or choosing another field which has risk and no financial security, it is often denied. It has been more than two decades of the 21st century, but still in India, 90% of parents want their children to become doctors or engineers. Every year, millions of students sit for competitive exams, some to fulfil their dreams and others to fulfil their dreams, but the latter have always been victims of this society, which has never understood their dreams and wishes but has always put pressure on them to score high and end up in hospitals or clinics as doctors.

We, as a generation who loves to explore and to create things, think that our parents do not understand our dreams and they think that we do not understand their concerns. They often indulge in heated conversation. Cutting one coat according to the cloth is often seen as a last option by students because they can’t afford the wealth they need to fulfil their dreams, and this is how the Indian middle class lives.