The Indian middle class has long been treated as the moral and economic centre of the Republic – the great stabiliser between wealth and want, modernity and tradition, democracy and aspiration. For decades, it was imagined through Nehruvian lenses: salaried, educated, thrifty, professionally ambitious, politically moderate, and socially respectable. But that middle class – the one that carried briefcases, read English newspapers, and believed in steady progress – no longer exists. The middle class of 2025 is a different creature altogether: digitally dependent, aspirationally global, but financially fragile. They shop online but borrow offline; they work in start-ups but live in rented homes; they send their children to international schools but can’t afford a medical emergency. This “neo-

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