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Middle class evades taxes, and corporates social audit, opine thinkers

The enormous ability of the Indian middle class to evade taxes and its complete disdain for the poor makes it distinguishable from those in other countries, say thinkers.

According to participants at a book discussion group in New Delhi, though the country's ''new middle class'' shows a remarkable interest in the democratic process, there is no commitment to the rules of the game, only a complete insensitivity to the marginalised.

The participants included journalists, academics and advertising experts. The occasion was the release of the book, Great Indian Middle Class by Pawan K Verma.

Several literary figures and politicians attended the discussion which was chaired by former diplomat J N Dixit.

About 80 per cent of engineers from the Indian Institutes of Technology go to the United States and only 11 per cent return. No graduate from the Indian Institutes of Management wants to work with any public sector company. The apathy towards socio-economic development of the country is interesting, said a speaker.

The book addresses the problems of social inequalities in the society and the nature and transformation of the middle class in the 50 years of the country's independence.

''The Indian middle class has learnt to work the system of permit raj very well,'' Verma said.

The Indian middle class, one of the largest in the world, rather grew out of the permit raj, he said.

Another opinion was that the apathy of the Indian middle class towards community development is reflected in a similar attitude of corporate houses. ''There is no social audit by corporations. When they do something for social development it is only for resurrecting their own manufacturing sites destroyed by floods or storms,'' a speaker said.

The author said contrary to popular belief, the percentage of those seeking higher education in the country was actually diminishing. ''We send six times more students to universities than China but our literacy rate is just half of that country.''

UNI