The Dalit middle class constitutes a significant segment of the Indian middle class (or middle classes) today, as a distinctive sociopolitical and cultural community. Though small in numbers within an ever-growing Indian middle class as well as Dalit population, middle-class Dalits have created political agency of their own within India's middle classes (seemingly apolitical) as well as the Dalit community (with a political identity self-attributed by Scheduled Castes [SCs]). The emergence of a minuscule Dalit middle class is an indication of limited socio-economic mobility among Dalits in the last seven decades. Despite several safeguards existing in the Indian Constitution to ameliorate the structural disadvantages faced by Dalits in society, their socio-economic mobility has been limited mainly due to limited socio-economic transformation in Indian society (Deshpande, 2003). The existence and growth of the Dalit middle class is often considered not only an indicator of achieved upward socio-economic mobility among them, but also, more significantly, a source of inspiration for the rest of the Dalit population. However, the emergence of a middle class among Dalits has not improved their socio-economic or political status in the caste hierarchy (Guru, 2002). Like poor Dalits, middle-class Dalits are also subjected to inequality, discrimination, and exclusion in their lifeworld (G. Srinivas, 2016; Saavala, 2001).

Therefore, in the last four decades, a large number of studies have focused on middle-class Dalits to understand social and economic mobility among them (see Kulke, 1976; Ram, 1988; Omvedt, 2001). Both empirical and conceptual analyses of the Dalit middle class largely focus on tracing the trajectory of the Dalit middle class and its characteristics, contributions to the Dalit cause, potential to fight social and economic inequality, and contributions towards socio-economic development and political empowerment of Dalits. From its inception, the Dalit middle class has garnered scholarly interest in its growth pattern as well as in its interaction with other sections of society. One of the earliest conceptualizations about the formation of the Dalit middle class has aptly emphasized it as the process of upward mobility of the very best, and often most talented, among Dalits (Dushkin, 1979).