It may have pedalled its way on the Atlas cycle to realise the post-liberalisation dream but now that the pandemic has killed the brand, it too is gasping without jobs and rehabilitation

I will always remember my first shot at being atmanirbhar, a much-chased moniker now, with my Atlas cycle. Senior school meant assuming some adult-like responsibilities and engaging with the world and my father gave me that first ticket to freedom. I trained on a friend’s Avon cycle, seen by family elders as a wannabe that didn’t have any of the toughness or elegance of a superbrand they had grown up with. So when it came to buying one for me, it had to be Atlas. Besides, back then it had a colour range that was not too pop-up. Mine actually was syrupy-shiny like Coca Cola, not brown exactly, the right choice I felt, like many peers caught in the cola wars of the time, wondering which company had the most fizz in its TVCs. And so began my upward mobility, beginning with meeting friends, hanging out with them, running errands with great joy, reaching out to my pupils as a home tutor and simply letting the wind blow through my hair in a gush of a new-found sense of self.

If the bicycle was with me, there was nothing that I could not conquer. Not even a deluge of a Kolkata monsoon could keep me home from finding my own way. Atlas was the reason that I learnt how to navigate the shortest routes through a maze of back alleys and lanes at a time when there was no Google map. And in Kolkata’s bustling traffic, it taught me discipline and alertness. By the lake and the greens, it let me give in to gay abandon. And then the inevitable happened, life moved on at a faster pace than its wheels and in India’s post-liberalisation era, I became part of a chase called aspiration and wish-fulfilment. I left behind the Atlas, donated it to an office clerk in my father’s office, for whom it turned out to be a means of livelihood, sparing him bus fares to work. I had forgotten all about it till the other day, in the grim days of the pandemic, I read that its last unit at Sahibabad had shut down. The company had been doing badly for the last few years, given the penchant for Chinese or branded superbikes among today’s youth. So when the lockdown came with the Coronavirus, the company lost its financial muscle and folded. Yet its legendary status came to haunt me and made me wonder if it was symptomatic of an India before and after 2020. The death of dreams that have been vacuous or rebirth of life as it should be and not what we liked it to be? In many ways, the death of Atlas signifies the death of the middle class dream, one that we had pedalled hard to realise and taken care to bubble-wrap, working our way through our many EMIs and propelling ourselves to personal conquests of the material kind — swanky car, eating out, a townhouse in the least and exotic vacations at the most. And now with the pandemic pushing us into a great depression on many fronts, social, economic and personal, many of my generation wish that Atlas was around to revive that old fearlessness of starting out from zero. One that could battle job cuts, layoffs, furloughs, salary freeze and losses and help us reorder life again. The virus has flattened the self-made fortunes of India’s surging professionals and turned their hard-earned indulgence into a sin. And as we cut corners of our upturned lives, which we had so lovingly crafted with our talent pool as the rich invested in our efforts and the poor serviced with their labour, we are no longer the happy mayonnaise layer.  That is now spilling out badly and deepening India’s haves versus have-not story. For India’s middle class can no longer work towards becoming rich, to “have” a life or decide to slide down completely to its origins or “not have” a job as the migrant labourer. The rich can afford to pull through by raiding the buffer stocks of their wealth. And if the reverse migration has taught us anything, then the poor, dispossessed of opportunity and now even dignity, are determined to steer their life through another degree of penury that they have anyway been used to. Besides, the redistribution of wealth in the form of revised Government spending and crisis response has meant that the rural economy has got a booster shot. Yet with the middle class that connects both layers thinning out, the economy won’t be catering much to either the “have” or the “have-not.” Credit-based packages won’t do much to rescue the middle class. Besides nobody thinks it needs welfarism or break of any sort.

The globalised world has always looked greedily at India’s aspirant and rising middle classes as an engine of growth and a growing market but with urban consumption collapsing, the economy has completely shapeshifted. World over, the subsidiary and allied industries that depended on urban demand and consumption and fuelled a post-millennial, lifestyle economy have taken a deep dive. As people have stopped travelling, going to restaurants and cut down on shopping, the tourism, hospitality and retail sectors have been badly hit. Nobody is swiping the credit card of conspicuous consumption when survival is the only necessity supported by a debit card.

Nobody may have documented it but there has been a reverse migration of the middle class along with the daily wagers and the homeless. Out of job, their savings flattened out in months and carrying the burden of EMIs, many have gone back to their home States, incapable of sustaining their lives in the big cities. The professionals find themselves at sea with a shrinking demand for their services. The “let’s change the world” start-up owners are floundering. This group comprises mostly India’s young — skilled, educated, talented, energetic and efficient — qualities that have lent India the demographic edge. Yet, their home States, too, have no room for them. There have been shocking reports of Masters degree-holders in Uttar Pradesh signing up for road-digging work under MGNREGA. So those waiting in the wings for their flight in the world question why education should be seen as an empowering tool when it cannot even withstand three months of crisis.  

The Americans say that the middle class did not face such a serious economic threat since the 1930s. We could say that the Indian middle class is in its worst phase, having gone back by at least two generations in its rationing and privation. And that’s going to last quite a while. It doesn’t have the stomach to take the burden of our economy or feed it anymore. Without salaries, neither can the Government earn taxes, nor can industries find a market for their products.

This vicious cycle and the erosion of the middle class will further entrench our deep socio-economic divides as it has earlier during disasters and pandemics. At least 49 million people across the world are expected to plunge into “extreme poverty” and India leads that projection. About 12 crore Indians have already lost their jobs, according to estimates by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. The virus has not just recast economics but socio-cultural patterns. Women are losing jobs faster than men because more of them are in service sectors most affected by the virus. Think the hospitality industry, with a slew of women from the front desk to the kitchen, retail, fashion and beauty industries. Think aviation and its army of hostesses. Think receptionists and office administrators. Think IT operators. The average educated Indian woman, who had waged many battles to be where she wants, is back to square one. She is already retreating into a home life of baking for kids, cooking specials and rushing between the washing machine and chores, as that role hasn’t changed and in a male patriarchal order, has been cemented further by the pandemic. All the dream-chasing young people from Tier 2 and 3 cities, who filled up service-industry jobs and even trained themselves to be worthy of it — in restaurants, bars, hotels, call centres — are out of work, not sure how they will retro-fit their lives back in their hometowns. They do not even have the Atlas cycle anymore. Even if I had one, would I be able to ride it in these middling years, what with the Government planning cycle corridors? Maybe it is time to pedal again after chewing on Parle G. Yes that company has posted record profits during lockdown.

(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)