Diego Maiorano

Off today on my Italian book tour for La Via Dell'Oro... friends in Turin, Milan, Padua, Florence, Perugia & Rome please come along and say hello!

In AP, our study finds that digital cash transfer systems are failing Adivasi households—excluding the poorest through tech barriers and administrative opacity. Without accountability, digital welfare risks reinforcing the very inequalities it aims to solve.

Women's day and all that.

But that doesn't make you middle class... I want to make just one point here about the budget. The average income of an Indian is Rs 2.3 lakhs (2024-25). The income of an average Indian (the median income that is) is significantly lower than this. So, those earning up to Rs 12 lakh and not paying income tax, please celebrate, but you are not Middle Class. You may be paying too much tax and not getting much in return, and have all the right to not like being in that situation, but that doesn't make you middle class. The money that you make might not be enough to meet your needs given the high inflation and the even higher aspirations, but that doesn't make you middle class. The money that you make might not be enough to save the kind of money that you want to, but that doesn't make you middle class. Of course, your income tax is cut directly from your salary, and you know several friends and acquaintances who deal in cash and do not pay as much income tax as you do, but that doesn't make you middle class. In your heads looking at the world around you, you might feel like middle class – like one writer recently put it, anyone with an income of up to Rs 1 crore should be considered middle class – but that doesn't make you middle class. You are the well-to-do in what is largely still a poor country. Of course, there are people out there who are even more well-to-do than you are, but doesn't make you middle class. Now, let the abuses start…