The biggest question for all of us is: How to address this new consuming class? Because – and quite much-saying – it is those Indians who also want to appear with alcohol in their hand on Page 3 of the Indian newspapers. But when alcohol becomes a status symbol like in the Western world (even though its glamour and much of its effects are only constructed) it will cause great harm, inhibit India’s growth and development…

I deserve to be different from others. I belong to the new consuming class  because I worked for it. I earned it. This is a better way to prove my social mobility by having a right (still limited right as per income ) to consume,” says Anil, 30 year old from Delhi NCR Gurgoan who is working in a Multinational Company.

The new class, consuming class, is found among the traditional middle class in India, especially in metropolitan cities. This is really a market driven new identity  which is built on a happy or unhappy past. People would like to keep this consuming class identity as a sign of success.

In a recent Hindustan Times news paper article with the headline “The many classes  in the middle” the writer Rama Bijapurkar talks about a new class among the middle class, whose essential qualification is  discontented consumerism or so to say  aspiring consumerism – ready to consume above a threshold. The author says it is not a desperate group of people among the Indian middle class but it is a homogenous one culturally.

I quote the author:

So when we berate the new middle class for not participating in social and national issues, let us remember that it is not the traditional middle class that we assume but actually a “consuming class” defined by its consumption behavior.”

The biggest question for all of us is: How to address this new consuming class? Because – and quite much-saying – it is those Indians who also want to appear with alcohol in their hand on Page 3 of the Indian newspapers.

But when alcohol becomes a status symbol like in the Western world (even though its glamour and much of its effects are only constructed) it will cause great harm, inhibit India’s growth and development.

Europe is the heaviest alcohol consuming region worldwide and there alcohol harm is a heavy burden on the economy, public health, societies, families and human beings.