A viral LinkedIn put up contrasting life in 1970 with 2025 has sparked a nationwide debate on whether or not India’s middle-class journey is simpler or more durable right now. Now, 80-plus former IAS officer Shailaja Chandra has jumped in, arguing that trendy conveniences and twin incomes make “the 2025s … decidedly higher” than the frugal, linear world she knew 5 many years in the past.
Responding to a viral LinkedIn put up that lamented the pressures of 2025, Chandra provided a first-hand comparability of life then and now. “The Nineteen Seventies have been linear however very limiting,” she wrote. “The center class was stretched between residing as joint households or confronting the stress of constructing ends meet. One was continually watching the bills… Going overseas on one’s wage (normally a single wage) was unthinkable.”
In distinction, she famous, trendy life affords extra freedom and luxury, due to digital comfort, rising incomes, and dual-earning households. “In 2025 the center class both owns or rents properly situated property. Consuming out, paying kids’s college charges and paying for his or her classes and actions… is reasonably priced for a lot of,” she added.
Highlighting how know-how has reshaped on a regular basis drudgery, Chandra wrote, “On-line buying and web fee for nearly the whole lot has modified the drudgery of scrutinising and paying payments… Holidays, residing in good accommodations, flying as a substitute of practice journey by Rajdhani have grow to be the norm for a big majority.”
She additionally pointed to safer city residing, CCTV-secured housing, health choices, and the liberty to alter jobs with upgraded abilities as marks of a extra empowered technology. “If skilling and re-skilling is what is required, individuals do it and up their market value with every change of job and place of job,” she wrote.
She signed off with a delicate but agency word to youthful readers: “Please assume earlier than you begin arguing with me. Nanis and Dadis do have eyes, ears and a mind!”
Chandra’s feedback got here after entrepreneur Himanshu Kalra posted on LinkedIn contrasting life in 1970 with right now’s extra aggressive and chaotic surroundings. “In 1970… you’re set for all times,” he wrote. However in 2025, “you begin with debt, get outdated in two years, hold upskilling… and each companions work simply to afford to lift a single baby.”
His put up struck a chord throughout generations, drawing responses starting from settlement over inflation and psychological pressure to extra hopeful takes on alternative and private development. However for a lot of, it was Chandra’s seasoned, unapologetic perspective that anchored the dialogue — and reminded everybody that progress is never one-dimensional.
