In President Droupadi Murmu’s speech to Parliament of India on Friday, which had several continuities with her previous addresses to the legislature, one difference stood out.
Murmu referred to the middle class eight times in her address to mark the beginning of the Budget Session — which comes days before Delhi votes in the Assembly elections on February 5 — after skipping mentioning the middle class in her address to Parliament in June 2024, just after the Lok Sabha election results that saw the BJP tally dip to 240. In comparison, in her address to Parliament just before the Lok Sabha elections, on January 31, 2024, Murmu mentioned the term middle class three times, clubbing them with the word “poor” on all three occasions. On January 31, 2023, Murmu mentioned the term middle class only once in her address, again alongside the poor.
The middle class surfaces
The President linked the economic progress of India with the “aspirations of the middle class and the fulfilment of those aspirations”.
