This was a class project conducted to understand how Content analysis tools like Hyper Research works and be able to appreciate the importance of Exploratory Research in general.
Team size: 6
Apart from learning about exploratory research, content analysis and Hyper Research tool, major learning for me from the project is how to handle a team.
As any other college students, team was little negligent, postponing work from today to tomorrow be everyday task, in this situation I had to convince the team to take things seriously, work as per schedule. Initially was able to energies three of them to kick start the project. Later from continued efforts and follow-up another team member started to join us. But the real challenge for me was from the last lady, who was so much dis-interested in the project that I had to finally make her understand that if she does not work, she is not going to get credit for the same, I am not someone who will put her name just for the sake in the project report. To my surprise, she approached me on the day before project submission, interested in submitting her part of the work and sit with team to constructively work on the project final day.
This was a moment of success for me, getting the content analysis work was the main success, but on the side lines I was able to make a bunch students, who were negligent and dis-interested in these activities, to work towards a common goal. Indeed we were able to successfully complete the project in time and a word of appreciation from our Prof. M.D. Rao was followed on the next day :-)
Below is the project report:
Introduction:
Indian economy is considered to be one of the fast growing economies of the world in 21 century, with large pool of educated population, India is set to become power center of the world. Two emerging factors of modern India are urbanization and growing middle class population. More and more urbanized and not too heavy / not too low income families are designing the India, today and tomorrow. The study here is to establish various dimensions in which these middle income families are affecting the economy of India.
Methodology:
As it is evident that the study is largely restricted to Middle Income population of India, however politically and economically stronger India has profound influence on smaller economies in the subcontinent like Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. In keeping view of this, a sample of six different individuals, including a young student from Nepal, have been interviewed to understand their views on present Indian economy, middle class contribution towards economical growth, short comings of these developments and challenges faced by the middle class population.
These interview transcripts have been then fed to the content analysis software, namely Hyper Research (v3.0.2). Hyper Research helps us to establish various commonalities, which can then be used as codes, with each code representing a particular theme. These codes act as building blocks in establishing Various Theories, with each theory representing a unique way in which the economy is getting affected by the emerging middle class population.
Note that, since this is an Exploratory Research, we cannot conclude that if any of these theories are actually applicable, however they do indicate possibility of such a phenomenon affecting the Indian economy.
Various Theories observed:
India has large part of its population in middle income class, hence as one can expect, more money in the hands of these middle income families, was a theory visible in most of the interview transcripts. Two third of the respondents agree with the idea that, Increase in Income of these families has influence on Indian economy.
Supported by the government policies, improved access to primary education and middle class people willingness to use higher education as stepping stone for their career growth has improved brand India image in world stage. Half of the respondents agree that well educated middle class people are having constructive influence on Indian economy.
Large population of relatively low expensive work force has attracted investors across sectors, which created large pool of employment opportunities both to highly qualified individual and to labour class. One third of individuals agree that improved employment opportunities to middle income population helped in Indian economy growth.
One of the respondents believes that urbanization and improved living standards of middle income families has helped in Indian Economy Growth.
As the income goes up, so do the challenges, family concerns, socio-political issues etc. We see that more than three quarter of the respondents believe that Middle Class population is not significantly contributing to Indian Economy growth as they are spending more time in fighting with problems of one self.
Conclusion: It is clear that, while higher income, better education and increased employment opportunities to middle income families are helping the economical growth, there are concerns of these people which still need to be addressed to see complete participation of common man in India’s economical growth.
