Shekhar Gupta: White-collar, blue-collar, no-collar

The millions of poor going home are a wonderful new generation of aspirational, working class Indians. Modi and his government failed to account for their fate

We usually classify the working classes based on the colour of the collars they wear: White-collar and blue-collar. The tragic, startling and continuing drama on our highways has woken us up to the existence of a third category of our working classes. Let’s call them the collar-less workers.

Why collar-less, you might ask. And with good reason. I would suggest, therefore, that picture all the hundreds of people you might see in the course of one day, making our lives possible, safe, comfortable.
 

Those loading and unloading bricks, cement and steel from trucks. Hauling bricks and mortar at construction sites.