New Delhi: The stereotypical middle-class urban voter is part cynic, part dreamer. She or He despises politicians and caste-based politics, and wishes Bihar could be a Shanghai.

 Sandeep Dubey  is Youth president of the Bharatiya Rashtravadi samanata party are hoping to appeal to this city stereotype by portraying themselves as a sort of political detergent needed to cleanse India of corruption and bureaucratic red tape that is at the top of most middle class grouse lists, and promote meritocracy.

With names such as Professionals Party of India and Jago (Wake Up) Party, they may not be serious contenders for political power, at least as yet, but their emergence before a string of state polls and next year’s general election suggests that middle-class concerns and aspirations will have a vent.

Take the Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party, or BRSP, whose name translates as Indian Nationalist Equality Party. The party’s Youth president is Advocate in Supreme Court of India,

“All labels are misnomers. You could probably call us nationalist,” says Sandeep, His party plans to contest state assembly elections in Bihar this year.

Estimates of India’s middle class vary. Households with disposable incomes between Rs2 lakh and Rs10 lakh a year comprise about 50 million people, roughly 5% of the population, consultant McKinsey and Co. said in a report last year.

By 2025 a continuing rise in personal incomes will enlarge the middle class to about 583 million people, or 41% of the population, it said. “The growth that has pulled millions of people out of poverty is also building a huge middle class that will be concentrated in India’s urban areas,” McKinsey said.

Getting middle-class voters to the polling booths is one of the prime concerns of the urban-centric parties.

“It is widely believed that a large segment of the middle class does not, or is not, able to vote,” says Mr Dubey, whose members include engineers and finance and software professionals. “This is due to a variety of causes, including (the perception that) ‘no one is worth voting for’.”