It would be easy to mistake Rajendra and Abhijit Kalekar for brothers. Aged 37 and 38, they share lanky appearances, friendly smiles and a gift of easy conversation; in fact, with the exception of Rajendra's mustache, they might be able to trade places. As first cousins in a tight-knit Mumbai family, they know each other well and the two men have maintained close family ties throughout their lives.
To outsiders, they also appear to play similar roles in the booming Indian economy: In their neatly ironed, open-neck dress shirts, both the Kalekar cousins are easily identifiable on the clogged streets of Mumbai as members of the fast-growing Indian middle class. They talk freely and eagerly about the things that interest middle-class people worldwide – the stock market, real-estate prices, the best schools for their kids, vacation plans, the morning commute.
But if you watched them make their journeys into work this week, it would have been immediately apparent that they are members of two very different groups, playing very different roles in the global economy, with increasingly little in common.
Despite almost identical educations and family backgrounds, the two men have found themselves members of two distinct middle classes. As poor countries become wealthy, these two classes, one old and fading, the other global and aggressive, increasingly find themselves at odds. When there are troubles in the world today, including some forms of terrorism, often at root it is because two middle classes are at war with one another.
Rajendra wakes every morning to his stirring wife and son in the sleeping room they share in their small but quiet three-room apartment in an older, government-built concrete structure. The couple bought the place five years ago for $18,750. It has more than doubled in value since then, he points out, though he is not eager to sell. It's in a bustling neighbourhood in northern Mumbai.
After he and his wife load their son onto a school bus, he makes his way through the crowds to the train station, where for a 25-cent ticket he will wedge himself into the teeming second-class carriage of one of the city's famous commuter trains and take his 40-minute daily ride. Strolling through more teeming crowds, he steps into the bank branch where he works as a manager – a dusty government-run building on a very poor street in a slum-packed section of Mumbai's south. His wife works at another branch of the same state-run bank. The ceiling fans kick into life as customers begin to flood in. At his metal desk, he works his way through piles of papers.
By this point in the day, his cousin Abhijit usually has boarded the elevator from his building's gym to the parking garage. He, his wife and their son have separate bedrooms in their five-room apartment in a luxurious new building surrounded by a wide, empty lawn – an extremely rare commodity in the world's most densely populated city.
“I must admit that I chose the place because of the tennis court,” he concedes, although he and his wife find little time to use the court, the pool or the gym facilities. By 7:30 a.m., he is in his four-door Honda, making his way to a futuristic mirror-walled office building, which bills itself as Windsor Tower, in a high-tech industrial park in northern Mumbai. Etched into the glass walls are his company's mottos, such as: “Our values: commitment, passion, integrity, speed.”
Abhijit, who has an MBA, works as a middle manager for a multinational cellphone company. His cousin Rajendra, who has a degree in commerce, works as a middle manager with a state-run bank. They are both doing very well in their jobs, and are gunning for promotions. Abhijit, who has a private office in the building's air-conditioned halls, may get himself a corner office and a raise of $500 a month. Rajendra, who has a green metal desk, may get moved to the next desk over, the top accounting position in the bank, and for this highest of promotions might receive an extra $100 a month.
