Does India have a middle class?
According to the thinking outlined in this article, it seems that India has no middle class.
The central point is that there are essentially two ways to measure inequality, one is in absolute terms and the other is in relative terms.
The problem with the definition of middle class used in the article is that it mixes the two measures, using both an absolute one (above $10 a day) with a relative one (top 5%). Hence the seeming nonsense of no middle class in India.
Arguably the best way of measuring income inequality is through the Gini coefficient. On this measure, India scores 36.8 as set out here. This is very similar to the value of the coefficient for the UK of 36.
However, as well as the current level of the Gini coefficient, one needs to look at the change in the coefficient. In both India and the UK, the figure is rising (that is, inequality is increasing) but, in India, the rate is growing even faster than in the UK as illustrated here.