In Defence of Sustho Sanskriti (Healthy Culture): Understanding Bengali Middle Classness in Neoliberal India

Abstract The ‘new middle class’, often identified as an upwardly mobile segment, primarily employed in the growing private service sectors, such as the information technology, and supposedly, representative of the changing lifestyles and consumption patterns of the Indian middle class, has stolen much of the limelight of the contemporary popular as well as scholarly discourses on the Indian middle class.2 2 ？ This article draws upon from the fieldwork conducted as part of my PhD work completed in 2016. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the international seminar on ‘The Middle Class in World Society’ held at ISEC (Institute of Social and Economic Change), Bangalore, India on 16th and 17th December, 2016.