Introduction

The Gaza Strip has always been characterised by changing political and economic realities. To grasp and understand the current reality of the Gaza Strip, this chapter aims to look at the political economy of the territory over five periods since the Israeli military occupation in 1967: the First Intifada (1987–93), the Oslo Accords (1993), the Second Intifada (2000–5), the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (2005) and finally Hamas's victory in the Palestinian parliamentary election (2006) and its taking control of the territory. The political economy of each period exhibited particular characteristics that impacted the overall living conditions of the territory; de-development has been a common feature throughout. The chapter therefore aims to contextualise this process of de-development under occupation by examining the course of political events and their impact on shaping the economic life of Palestinians living in Gaza.

Before addressing the ways foreign (especially Western-donated) aid contributed to and consolidated a process of control and de-development similar to that under occupation, it is first important to differentiate between two important terms: de-development and underdevelopment. Each term refers to different reasons why adequate development was not achieved, thus justifying the use of one term over the other. Second, it is important to give a historical background to this process as it occurred under the occupation. This is to help us understand how donor countries post Oslo Accords (1993), particularly the United States, have not only failed to alleviate this systematic process of control and de-development, but have also indirectly contributed to this by: (a) accepting the status quo imposed by Israel and (b) adopting the Israeli security narrative in its relationship with the territory. Accordingly, the chapter will establish that Gaza's economic failure cannot be attributed to its poor economic performance or the lack of either financial or human resources, but rather to a deliberate and systematic process of economic warfare undertaken by Israel as the occupying power of the Palestinian territories in the WB and Gaza Strip. In this context, the chapter illustrates how Israeli's policy towards Gaza has always been one of ‘de-development’, where Israel has worked continuously to destroy Gaza's indigenous economy (Roy, 1995).

Foreign aid is acknowledged as a tool to assist progress in developing countries, yet in the Palestinian case, instead of enhancing the standard and quality of life, promoting democracy and political reform, and assisting Palestinians to build their state institutions, foreign aid is argued by some to have aggravated these aspects (le More, 2005). Discussions in this book will investigate whether and how the political promotion of certain areas has created social-economic and political imbalances within society in Gaza. It also examines how these imbalances might hinder the opportunity for marginalised groups from advancing economically and, in many cases, how these groups might deteriorate.

As is the case in other communities, social division has always existed among Palestinians. Yet, in the context of Palestine, and Gaza in particular, these social divisions have been heavily influenced by several political events starting from the Nakbeh in 1948, to the Six-Day War in 1967 to the post-Oslo era (post-1993). Palestinians were divided along lines drawn by various national and international institutions that provided economic support. Social divisions among Palestinians can be seen in the classifications of Palestinians as refugees and non-refugees, locals (mowatineen) and returnees (aydeen), and metropolitans (mutamadenin) and peasants (fellahin) (Peretz, 1977). These classifications have extended themselves from merely being an external perception to mapping the population, to one where Palestinians began to selfidentify into, and place themselves within, these different groups. We will look at the context within which these divisions have emerged and will investigate whether foreign aid represents an additional factor that has exacerbated dedevelopment by widening these socio-economic divisions. We will also look at how aid has mobilised Palestinians politically and economically, and whether and how these forms of mobilisation have influenced the current Palestinian social reality. Moreover, the book will enquire whether foreign aid agencies demonstrated duality in their aid policies (Schumacher, 1989) in dealing with different sectors of Palestinians. In this context, this book will investigate the nature of this duality.

This chapter departs from the materialist-economic approach to class analysis and examines the formation of India's rural middle class from a perspective influenced by Pierre Bourdieu's approach to social classes. Bourdieu was concerned with symbolic representations, in the realms of culture, art, literature, science and language. However, it must be noted at the outset that although Bourdieu is a major theorist of class, his account of social classes is applied here differently to the way in which Marx and Weber's accounts were applied in Chapters 3 and 4. The fundamental difference arises from the fact that Bourdieu is critical of abstract conceptualisations, and his analyses of class are primarily drawn from empirical investigations and in relation to social practices. Bourdieu's approach is used in our analysis as a heuristic device, and not as a prescriptive definition of class membership. The chapter is arranged in four sections: the first examines Bourdieu's sociology and his approach to the study of social classes. The second section reviews existing scholarship on the urban middle class in India that is based on Bourdieu's approach to social classes. The third section suggests productive ways in which this sociology of class can be applied to the rural Indian context, prompted by a discussion of interior design and ‘living rooms’ in Rahatwade and Nandur.

The analysis of the IHDS-II (2011–12) in relation to caste membership and primary source of household income among urban households is shown in Table A2.1. The analysis shows continuation of caste disparity in the labour market in urban India. The table illustrates that the highest proportion of lower caste groups (SCs and STs) primarily earn their living from wage labour (both in agriculture and non-agricultural sectors). For example, more than half the SC population (53.92 per cent) are primarily engaged in wage labour (21.38 per cent in agriculture and 32.54 per cent in non-agricultural wage labour). Among ST households, in total 31.47 per cent earn their living primarily from wage labour (3.27 per cent in agriculture and 28.2 per cent in non-agricultural wage labour), while among upper caste groups (Brahmins and Forward Castes) only a small segment earn their living from wage labour. Table A2.1 also shows that among upper caste groups, the highest proportion, 52.59 per cent of Brahmins and 41.57 per cent of Forward Castes, are engaged in salaried employment, while only 15.83 per cent of the SCs and 43.22 per cent of the STs earn their living primarily from salaried employment. The percentage of salaried employment among STs in urban India is much higher than rural India, which indicates that STs in urban areas have easier access to government reservations. Overall, caste continues to play a significant role in the labour market in urban India.

On my second visit to Rahatwade, a small village in western Maharashtra, in May 2015, I am talking, through my research assistant, with a group of men, a meeting arranged by the Village Panchayat. They are curious about my work, bemused to hear of my academic interest in their village. I tell them: ‘I am here to visit middle class households.’ The little of the village that I had seen did not register in my head as qualifying, categorically, to have any middle classes from the conventional theoretical perspectives. So, I threw the question out to them: ‘I was wondering if there are any middle-class families in this village? I would like to talk to them.’ The village guide's response surprised me. He looked around at the group of men, hands outstretched, and said, ‘Don't worry about that madam. We are all middle class!’

This book explores the formation and trajectories of India's rural middle class(es). Studies of the middle class are almost exclusively confined to urban contexts. This is particularly the case in developing countries, where it is assumed that cities, not the countryside, host the process of middle-class formation, effectively eliminating from view large numbers of rural households. Rural societies are rarely analysed in middle-class terms. There are theoretical reasons to explain this. Most influential social theorists, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies and Émile Durkheim, assumed a clear social distinction between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ societies, which in turn created ideal categories that made it possible to theorise the similarities and contrasts between pre-industrial and modernised industrial societies. While cities were assumed to be the chief sites of economic growth, industrial development and modernity, the rural world, embodying something primordial, represented a community that, by virtue of its isolation from the urban-based practices of capitalist development and experiences of modernisation, was considered to be classless by definition, bounded by kinship ties, family lineages, personal networks, and relative isolation.

The ‘middle class’ has become one of the key categories of economic analysis and developmental forecasting for all observers of India – whether from government, academia, policymaking, business or media. All this discussion suffers, however, from one major oversight: it assumes that the middle class is a uniquely urban category. Studies dedicated to understanding the middle class, in India and globally, almost entirely overlook its rural presence. As this book has demonstrated, however, more than a third of India's middle class is rural, and 17 per cent of rural households belong to the middle class. My purpose has been to bring this vast and dynamic population into view, and to fully confront the neglected questions surrounding India's rural middle class.

However, probing the development of the rural middle class required an exploration of the ways in which the middle class is defined theoretically, and the application of theoretical insights to generate empirical understandings. Given that there is no single overarching theory, critical pluralism came to be the order of the day. Three analytical lenses have helped me examine in considerable detail the making of the Indian rural middle classes – those of Marx, Weber and Bourdieu. This plural approach elucidates the dynamics of middle class formation in the wake of the introduction of economic liberalisation, and contributes to a holistic understanding of the economic characteristics, social composition, cultural practices, aspirations, everyday worlds and social identifications of the rural middle classes.

While urban India is being liberalised, rural liberalisation has been an uneven process in both economic and social terms. For some decades, agriculture has no longer been the primary focus of life in rural India. Diversification is now a central feature of rural economy and society, as households have undergone social and economic transformations, and in so doing have developed a new sense of class identity and aspirations. In the villages I have studied, and probably in many other parts of rural India, industrialisation has produced new social relations of production, accumulation strategies and labour relations. For the rural youths it has facilitated entry into the skilled labour market, a process they have accelerated with intensive pursuit of education and training, fast-tracked through the informal economy of technical credentials. The resulting rural middle class has created distinctive lifestyles, aspirations and consumption patterns. In what follows I will condense the findings of this book.

The ‘middle class’ is analysed in a range of different global contexts. The term often refers to a category of people who are somewhere near the middle of an imaginary social spectrum along which income, property, wealth and occupational opportunities are distributed. In the context of developing countries, or countries experiencing rapid economic growth, the middle class holds centre stage in economic and public discourse: its size is often used as an important developmental proxy, a litmus test for socio-economic growth, and an indication of political stability in the face of globalisation (Birdsall, Graham and Pettinato, 2000). In the field of development studies, it is commonly assumed that countries with larger middle classes are able to reach a consensus on public goods and economic development planning and therefore tend to enjoy faster economic growth, higher national income and better public services. In contrast, societies with polarised economic classes incline to focus their economic planning on distribution and redistribution between polarised factions that alternate in power (Easterly, 2001). In a comprehensive examination of the middle classes in East Asia and Latin America, Diane Davis demonstrates a direct relation between the size of the middle class and the state's economic and development planning, and notes that the middle class envisages its economic and political interests as differentiated from the interests of capitalists and of labourers.

In Chapter 1, using IHDS-II (2011–12) and on the basis of primary source of household income, households were categorised in different classes, including three categories of middle class. Here, we will examine the caste compositions of different identified classes in urban India. Table A6.1 presents the class composition of each caste group in urban India. According to the table, among the SCs and STs in urban India the majority of households belong to the labouring households (36.36 per cent of SCs and 31.84 per cent of STs throughout urban India), which is much higher than the average percentage of the total population in the labouring classes in urban India. Furthermore, almost 56.5 per cent of Brahmins and 40.17 per cent of Forward Castes belong to the top two categories of the middle class, while only 19 per cent of the SCs and 28.9 per cent of ST households in urban India belong to the top two categories of the middle class. This is indicative of the caste disparities in class membership in urban India, with the middle and the upper classes being consisting primarily of upper castes. Therefore, the upper caste character is one of the defining characteristics of the urban middle classes. However, comparing the result of caste compositions of middle classes in urban India with the result from rural India (presented in Table 4.12) shows greater caste disparities among rural classes.

In addition to examination of occupational distribution among different caste groups in rural India in 2011–12, which was presented in Chapter 4, here we use another two rounds of data at All-India level to examine the persistence of caste inequality in the labour market over the last 30 years. Tables A3.1 and A3.2 present the occupational distribution among different caste groups in rural India in 1993–1994 and 2004–2005, respectively. Figure A3.1 illustrates the distribution of occupations among different caste groups in rural India from 1993 to 2012. Data from 1993 to 1994 (Table A3.1) does not disaggregate among the Brahmins, Forward Castes and OBCs, and therefore, only occupational distribution among SCs and STs and overall rural India is included in the graph. The graph demonstrates caste inequality in occupations has changed over time. For example, there has been an increase in the percentage of the SCs and STs engaged in salaried employment. In 1993–94, only 4.68 per cent of SC and 3.65 per cent of ST households in rural India primarily earned their income from salaried employment. In 2004–05, their percentage increased to 8.42 and 8.76 and in 2011–12 to 7.8 and 9.31, respectively. In sum, there has been a marginal decline in the relationship between caste and occupation in rural India, when we examine the occupational pattern of SCs and STs in rural India.

In what follows, using IHDS-II, we show statistically significant caste disparities in each marker of middle-class status in rural and urban India, with SCs and STs at the bottom, OBCs in the middle, while the other Forward Castes and Brahmins on the top of distribution of socio-economic resources. The analyses suggest that the caste divide continues to play a significant role in social mobility, and is therefore also a significant determinant of middle-class membership. Caste still impacts individuals’ access to the income generating capital and directly affects class cleavages. Tables A5.1 and A5.2 provide information on per capita consumption expenditure (mean), average household expenditure on education, average total number of household assets, social networks, and highest level of adult education by caste groups in rural and urban India, respectively. The first row of each table provides information on household caste. Of the total 27,213 sample households in the IHDS-II in rural areas, 4.17 per cent (1,135 households) were Brahmins; 18.27 per cent (5,548 households) belonged to the Forward Castes (except Brahmins); 42.26 per cent (11,103 households) to OBCs; 24.3 per cent (6,298 households) to SCs; and 11 per cent (3,129 households) to STs.

As evident in Table A5.1, there are statistically significant caste disparities in land ownership, highest level of education in adults (aged 21 and above), total number of household assets, and consumption expenditure across rural India. When compared to the Brahmins and the Forward Castes, SCs and STs are less likely to own any land, have smaller average landholdings and have higher proportions of illiterates in the households. In rural India, SCs and then STs have the highest proportion of landless households (52.82 per cent of the SCs and 38.37 per cent of STs in rural India do not own any land). They also have the lowest average area of land owned and cultivated. Similarly, examining the highest level of adult education (mean) among different caste groups in rural India shows the average highest level of adult education is the lowest among SC and ST households, followed by OBCs: the average highest level of education in adults among Brahmins is 10 years, for Forward Castes is 8 years, while among the SCs and STs the average highest level of adult education is 5 years.

This study of the formation of India's rural middle class is undertaken through an extensive case study of two villages, Rahatwade and Nandur, located in Pune District in western Maharashtra. Analysis of the India Human Development Survey II (2011–12) indicates that Maharashtra holds the biggest proportion of the self-identified rural middle classes, that is, 8.5 per cent of self-identified rural middle classes are in Maharashtra. Before arriving at the main body of the book, it is crucial to paint a picture – relevant as a background to rural class formation – of research areas. In what follows, I first briefly familiarise readers with the social and economic composition of Maharashtra. Then, I move on to provide a selective history of each village, their physical and social structure, and a more detailed analysis of their internal arrangements and settlement patterns, hamlets, caste composition, cropping patterns and occupational diversities. The last section offers a brief account of rural household stratification and a preliminary examination of class structure, a background necessity for the arguments in the remainder of the book. Beside its contextual purpose, this chapter will also be useful for readers interested in Maharashtra, and academic researchers and graduate students in social sciences with a focus on class formation in agrarian regions and village studies. Let us now turn to a brief overview of the political economy of Maharashtra.

Maharashtra

In 1960, the Marathi-speaking districts of the Bombay Province, the Central Province, Berar and the princely state of Hyderabad were combined to form the new state of Maharashtra. It is divided into five main geographical regions: Vidarbha, located in the east and consisting of the Marathi-speaking districts from the Central Province and Berar; Marathwada, located in the south-eastern part of the state, which was part of the princely state of Hyderabad; Konkan, which includes the coastal districts from the Bombay Province; Khandesh, situated in the northwest of Maharashtra; and western Maharashtra, the district from the Bombay Province, in which Rahatwade and Nandur are located (Vora, 2009).