Rajeev Narayan

The middle of the night, outside an Apple store, is not typically associated with India’s shopping culture. Yet, hundreds of young professionals clad in hoodies and clutching coffee cups brave the Delhi or Mumbai weather gods to become the first to claim a new iPhone—they have become a new and recurring Indian tableau. A decade ago, queuing overnight for an iPhone was the stuff of Western pop culture. Today, it is part of India’s own evolving narrative of aspiration.

On other roads, literally, Mahindra’s Thar SUV, originally built as a lifestyle off-roader has turned into a rolling billboard of assertion. Disturbingly, Thars have been disproportionately associated with road-rage incidents and adrenaline-fuelled misconduct. Haryana Director General of Police Om Prakash Singh, speaking off the cuff, commented to a fellow officer that Thar-owners were “crazy” (‘dimaag ghuma hua hoga unka’) and should “suffer consequences”.

The remarks were made in a private conversation and should have stayed personal, but they were captured on video and went viral, igniting a digital storm. That DGP Singh also called riders of Royal Enfield’s Bullet motorcycle “rogues” (‘badmash’) added additional colour to the overall video. His observations were less about the vehicles and more about what they symbolised –visibility, dominance, provocation and an unfiltered declaration that “I exist and you will notice”.

Psychology of Loud Arrival

Queues to buy iPhones and the incidents involving Thars and Bullets make for two very different settings; one is orderly, aspirational and consumerist, while the other is chaotic, kinetic and territorial. Yet, the impulse is identical, one that points to a new India: one that does not merely want progress, it wants performance; not just success, but spectacle.

Inside an Apple Iphone store in Delhi

To scour this shift, the onus should be on looking beyond income charts and sales graphs, and at the architecture of the new Indian mind, reshaped by economic reform, social media and digital connectivity. For years, the middle class was driven by quiet ambition. Success meant stability, propriety and modest pride. Today, aspiration has created a different Indian: he is networked, expressive, impatient and psychologically attuned to validation.

“Consumption in India has moved from utility to identity,” says consumer psychologist Rama Bijapurkar, chronicler of the ‘Great Indian Middle Class’. New buyers, she says, do not just buy products; they purchase the rights to belong to an elevated tier. Sociologist Shiv Visvanathan captures the cultural mutation thus: “India has moved from civilisation to celebration.”

Social Media Amping Things Up

Social media is both an amplifier and an access ramp. In 2010, status was local and physical. In 2025, it is broadcast, algorithm-curated and indexed by engagement. To matter is to be seen. And to be seen, one must own the extraordinary or perform the extraordinary. Actions are no longer ancillary; it is the achievement that is paramount. After all, what better way to celebrate your own success than to watch the audience react to it?

For millions of upwardly mobile Indians, statements of possession and aspiration are layered not just upward but outward, into visibility, virality and voice. The Thar is not an automobile; it is a prop. The iPhone queue is not consumer patience; it is theatre. Both acquisitions are less about affluence and more about announcement.

Critics say this wave reflects insecurity, rather than any newfound confidence. India’s economic mobility, though real, is uneven. For every gated community, there is an overcrowded aspirant neighbourhood watching it on Instagram. The chase is not simply to rise, but to eliminate doubt that one has risen. India’s old middle class sought respectability. The new bunch seeks reaction.

Smashing Up Bottled History

Cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s concept, ‘Capacity to Aspire’, can be instructive here. Ambition has become a social navigational tool, especially in a society where hierarchies have bottled up the right to dream loudly. With that ambition now democratised and becoming runaway, it has turned into a backlash impulse, an assertiveness that can border on aggression. India has 65 crore people under the age of 35 years today. It also has a job market that cannot always match the speed of ambition. When achievement and attention fail to scale evenly, attention becomes a convenient surrogate.

Boxing champion Nikhat Zarin with Thar gifted by Mahindra to her

This explains the aggression being seen in public assertion, with people revving engines, playing loud music and exhausts, indulging in road intimidation and convoy culture, and overzealously flaunting the muscularity of their vehicles and gadgets. It also explains the softer, consumerist analogue such as unboxing videos, launch queues, influencer pilgrimages and gadget-driven peacocking. The grammar differs, but the language is quite similar.

Marketplace of Identity

Brands have learnt this and their marketing programmes are aimed at triggering soft mutinies against subtlety. India’s most successful product platforms now thrive on drama. Smartphones are launched like coronations, SUVs shot out like battle tanks conquering landscapes, earbuds sold as acts of rebellion and scooters positioned as social passports. The market is not merely fulfilling demand; it is incubating desire.

India’s premium consumer segment (read “those willing to pay mark-ups for brands”) has been growing at twice the pace of the local bazaar economy. Luxury doesn’t mean discreet excellence anymore; it translates into recognisable excess. Neighbourhoods and neighbours should know, the street must turn, social media posts should garner thousands of reactions…

This impulse also overlaps with a sociological churn. Traditional status markers such as surname, caste and legacy still matter, but they are being crowded out by new currencies like experience, acquisition and virality. For the first time in India’s long history, identity is being shaped less by lineage and more by leverage, be it financial, digital or visual.

Next Frontiers of Assertion

Where is this headed? One, we may see escalation into personalised symbolic engineering, such as custom vehicles, hyper-loud design choices, and algorithm-fed lifestyles to ensure trending. Two, a rise of curated extremism in leisure activities, leading to more endurance events, adventure bragging, first-to milestones and destination one-upmanship. Three, the emergence of status micro-economies… these could be exclusive drops, gated digital communities and owner-only ecosystems where belonging itself is the desired commodity.

We could also see a parallel counter-movement by those who reject the spectacle and embrace invisible affluence, minimalism and the luxury of anonymity. In societies undergoing rapid aspirational inflation, understatement becomes its own status code… eventually.

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Beyond the noise, India’s new age of arrival is not trivial or vapid; it is transitional. It is a society throwing off humility conditioned by scarcity and graduating into self-expression conditioned by opportunity. The turbulence comes from a generation that wants its moment… immediately, audibly and undeniably. But soon, the country will ask: Is visibility a milestone or a mirage? Is aspiration still a ladder, or has it become a loudspeaker?

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications professional.