NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday described the middle class as the growth engine of India and said nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the country’s next centres of economic activity.Participating in a panel discussion on ‘How to promote the rise of a new middle class’ at the Rencontres Economiques d’Aix-en-Provence, a major economic forum of France, Sitharaman said 31% of India’s population is middle class as of today. Since India opened its economy, the middle class is growing at an annual rate of 6.3%, she noted.“We think 93% of all spending in India will be because of the middle class or the slightly affluent consumers…and again, this middle class is not concentrated in our metropolitan cities…India’s model has resulted in the development in such a way that the middle class is present not just in big cities but they are on the contrary in these tier two, tier three cities,” the finance minister said.Quoting an OECD study, Sitharaman said India will surpass China in absolute terms in its middle-class population size between 2030 and 2035 on the back of several measures taken by govt. Stressing that India remains the fastest-growing large economy after Covid-19, primarily because of consumption triggered by the middle class, she said, “Nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the new centres of economic activity”. Sitharaman spoke about benefits of AI, saying people are continuously upgrading their technical skills. For those who fear AI may displace jobs, there is extensive govt support through AI-focused skilling programmes, she said.
