Chapter 2: What is Economy Class ?

Economy Class is a class of people who are rich in liabilities, middle in bank balance and poor in future prospect. In economic terms, Economy Class is a group of people in contemporary society who pretend them self as Upper Class but actually parallel to working class with absolutely no control on livelihood.

In Indian culture Economy class was initially limited to professions like Doctors, Engineers, Advocates, CAs etc, but post globalization policy in India after boom of IT industry it included IT consultants and technical professionals. The globalization in business, finance, technology, trading and media lead the tendency of embracing western culture in Indians. The globalization policy of India was certainly agreement on economic affairs but in fact it made effect on way of life of it's benefited group of society by aristocracy of the world.

So I tried my best to give you the theoretical definitions of Economical Class but in general terms, Economical Class person is a person who due to superiority complex buy bottled water in restaurants where filtered RO water is available without extra cost, do shopping in dazzling malls where as same thing is available less expensively in local shops, buy big car when it is not at all required, purchases 3 BHK flat for couple plus one family and so on.

The superiority complex generated while professional competition or professional status maintenance tends to enjoy 'unrivaled prosperity'. The major side effect of this phenomena is people spend more on unnecessary luxury and neglect essential expenditures. The high rich like expenditure tendency in economical class has lowered the household saving rate in India and leading to credit card debt and in bankruptcy.

Many of you might see your self in the shoes of Economical class and honestly even I am one of it. In following chapters we will see Positive, Negative and Funny sides of this class and discuss the use of it in development of India.

Chapter 1 : The Birth

For centuries there were only three economical categories Rich Class, Middle Class and Poor Class. Fourth and most important class of today's economy i.e. Economy class has emerged post globalization policy of India specially after mid 90's of 20th century. 

People born in 70s and early 80s i.e. Bronze age of cyber era is the most confused generation on earth and I am one of it. This generation has enjoyed the transformation of Black & White Television to color to HD Television , Telephone to Cell phone and most importantly from Country Bharat to Country India. 

The change we have experienced is exponential. We started our television mania with epic channel name Door Darshan or in short DD. Those were glories days accompanied by serials like 'Malgudi Days', 'Ramayana', 'Mahabharata', 'Hum Log', 'Nukkad', 'KaramChand' etc. In late 80s or somewhere in early 90s we experienced wave of Cable television which taught us to surf on TV by swapping between hundreds of channels. Later in late 2000 we were introduced by DTH services but it wasn't a game changer.

In Bronze age ringing telephone in somebody's house in India was shiver of pride. In those days there used to be one phone among two or three buildings.  In year 1995 first mobile service was introduced in India. This move actually was effect of liberalization policy of India. Initially mobile phone were very costly and used to get micro finance to buy it. The aggressive marketing of mobile services in India lead to vast number of users and now there are more than 950 million Mobile users in India and in urban area there is atleast one mobile per person. I remember my first mobile phone which was bulky Nokia made 5110 model. That phone was so big to carry in packet that I used to carry in hand (that was good for show off too). Now mobile phones we carry are called smart phones and calling and receiving the call is one of the option in it's range of features. In our schools days we used to write essay on topics like 'One hour at railway station' 'My favorite outdoor play', I heard now a days pupil write essay on hot topic like 'Day without Mobile'.

Introduction of internet to our generation was like introduction to heaven, as said in verses it can be described as 'where rivers of wine delicious to those who drink'. In year 1995, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) launched the first internet service in India (Gateway Internet Access Service [GIAS]). In consequence, Six nodes were installed at following cities Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Banguluru and Pune. Each node was connected to Internet via high speed MCI circuits (of that time) having a bandwidth of approximately 10 Mbps. Internet in India bought ‘Cybercafe’ culture. It was a very costly affair. I remember I went to cybercafe and paid Indian Rupee 1 per minuet to open my first email account on hotmail. In this period there was global boom of 'Dot Com' and lead many engineers to travel from India to USA. This was the period when IT industry glorified in India. This was the period when today's Economy class in India was born from the womb of middle class.

Economy class in India carry characteristics of all other classes i.e. Rich Class, Middle Class and Poor Class.