Beyond call centres The indirect effects of service sector-driven growth on new middle-class consumption and retail in Mumbai

The growth of the Indian ICT-ITES sector has been the subject of extensive research in the past decade (Agrawal et al., 2012; Bhattacharjee, 2012; Agrawal, 2014; Bhattacharjee and Chakrabarti, 2015; Kleibert, 2015; Beerepoot and Kumar, 2015). Research shows that India is the first large but extremely poor country that has entered the global economy on the basis of the labour power of its middle-class white-collar workers (Dossani and Kenney, 2009, 99). The Indian ICT-ITES sector has been instrumental in providing direct employment to around three million workers (NASSCOM, 2010). In addition, NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) claims that every job in the ICT-ITES sector indirectly generates four more jobs (ibid.). As such, the ICT-ITES sector has contributed to transforming the economy, driving a shift in spending power and stimulating the rise of a new middle class (NMC) (Fernandes, 2000; Fernandes and Heller, 2006; Nijman, 2006; Das, 2009; Murphy, 2011).