How a year of coronavirus financially dented feted India's middle class

 For Indians who had newly joined the growing middle class, the economic crisis following the pandemic has dealt a severe blow

When the second wave of Covid-19 was beginning its steep climb in India in April 2021 and most states were locking down, thereby putting a freeze on economic activity, Jitendra Singh feared the worst. Singh, 27, expected to lose his city job and be forced to return to his small village of Nagla Moti in Etawah district, western Uttar Pradesh.

Singh was born into hardship in Etawah, and had lost his father during his childhood, he told IndiaSpend. But by the 2000s, India's economy was growing fast and its ripple effects were showing in tens of thousands of small towns and villages. For the Singh family, change came in the form of a computer shop, which they opened with their pooled savings. Over the next few years, they moved into India's coveted middle-class. After he finished studying and got his first job in Etawah, in 2016, the combined monthly household earnings increased to about Rs 35,000, Singh said.

In 2019, Singh moved to Guwahati to work at a dairy company for Rs 15,000 a month and wondered if his dreams were beginning to take shape. "I have been a dreamer for most of my life," he said. Singh began dreaming of buying a house of his own, driving a car and one day travelling to Switzerland for a holiday. But all of it came crashing down when the Covid-19 pandemic plunged India's economy into a historic recession. The economy shrank by a record 7.3 per cent in 2020-21, and with it, employment, wages and the incomes of millions of India's poor and middle-class households.