Services-driven growth and India’s changing socio-economic fabric Emergence of a new middle class and the contribution of Mumbai’s IT-eS industry to its formation

The emergence of the offshore-services industry is claimed to have significantly altered the socio-economic fabric of India, giving rise to the formation of a ‘new’ middle class. This thesis explores the contribution of Mumbai’s offshore-services industry to a new middle class formation, in the broader context of the rise of such a class in India in general. The concept of class is used as the central analytical tool as it encompasses multiple dimensions along which societies are stratified to provide a holistic understanding of how societies function and how socio-economic transformations take place. The theoretical framework of this thesis is anchored on Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital. It studies changes in the possession and distribution of economic and cultural capitals and their conversion into new forms of capital in India in general, along with the specific role of offshore-services in bringing about such a transformation.