India is majorly comprised of middle and above middle class population and according to a recent survey there are people from various different streams of life are joining the middle class segment of the country. The new entrants include pani puri vendors, dosa sellers, carpenters, welders, launderers, drivers and cable TV technicians who seem to have pulled themselves out of the clutches of poverty and leapt into a section of the middle class. Head of Mumbai University's school of economics, professor Neeraj Hatekar and his colleagues Kishore More and Sandhya Krishna have found this in a recent study. "Lower middle class households earn better not because they are engaged in different occupations compared to the poor, but because they have been able to get more of their family members to do the same things than the poor do," says Hatekar.

A survey of around 800 households conducted by the School of Economics found a significant shift in the type of assets held by those who had just entered the lower middle class. Almost everyone had a cell phone and a watch or clock. Over 70 per cent had access to electricity and about 60 per cent had a fan, owned a colour television, had a pressure cooker and a chair. More than half of them had gold jewellery and steel utensils. The middle class is now a diversified group.