(Re)Producing Class. On Development as Middle Class Mission

Abstract

In the following sections, I attempt to put some light on people who carry work of ‘ending ofpoverty and ignorance and disease and inequality ofopportunity’. It is impossible to certainly determine who Nehru himself had in mind by stating ‘our work will not be over’ (Nehru 1947). Did he mean all citizens of India? Perhaps. There are, however, some hints that might point at the special role of middle classes in this endeavour. As Pavan K. Verma noticed: ‘Unfortunately, the elegance of his [Nehru’s] prose and the content ofhis speech inspired only a minuscule ofnumber of Indians, mostly fromthe middle classes, whohad access to a radio and, more importantly, could understand English. For, to the overwhelming majority of Indians, despite the years of British rule, English and the way of life of which it was both a symbol and an instrument were incomprehensible and alien’ (Varma 2007:2).