In 2017, the granddaughter of R.K. Laxman, the legendary cartoonist and creator of the popular character, Common Man, had apparently planned to introduce two new comic strip characters: the New Common Man and the Common Woman. Indeed, there is little doubt that the average — ‘common’ — person is ever-evolving. Since 1951, Laxman’s befuddled and silent Common Man has stood in for the hopes, aspirations, struggles and even the foibles of the typical Indian. He wears a dhoti and a simple jacket and is the focus of a deluge of electoral manifestos. Yet, his astute insights capture every aspect of the political circus. Who exactly is the Common Man, though? And how are the characteristics of the average person evolving? Political, social and economic perspectives all play a part in this process of evolution.
Is the Common Man a part of society’s underprivileged groups or is he from the lower-middle class? Or is he someone who lacks access to adequate healthcare, education and other requirements because he is not financially well-off? The Common Man has different names in different societies. He is Joe Bloggs or Man on the Clapham Omnibus in the United Kingdom; he is the Man on the Bondi Tram in Australia and, in America, the Average Joe or Jane.
Is Homer Simpson from the American animated sitcom, The Simpsons, an Average Joe? He certainly is the type of person who goes to work and does what is needed and then goes home and does the same and, then, repeats this each day. Here, the term, ‘average’, indicates a person who belongs to the medians of different chosen traits.
The management expert and technology entrepreneur, Kevin O’Keefe, chronicled his multi-year hunt for the most statistically average American in his 2005 bestseller, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen. O’Keefe compiled more than 1,000 facts about the Average American and discovered that he or she lives within three miles of a McDonald’s and two miles of a public park, is in a better financial situation than his parents while making no more than $75,000 per year, and believes in god and the literal truth of the Bible while holding some views that traditional churches have deemed sacrilegious. In the end, O’Keefe realised that the Average American was actually rather extraordinary.
But the Common Person changes with time. The Washington Post conducted a study in 2018 to find that the Average American was a 52-year-old woman with a bachelor’s degree who lived in a Californian city and worked in “education and health services,” making $889.62 a week. In 2016, she cast her vote for Hillary Clinton.
But in 2021, the Saturday Evening Post found her to be a white, married, 32-year-old woman with German ancestry who is the mother of a two-year-old boy. Her name is probably Jessica (the most common name for an American woman of that age) and she lives in California and works in the healthcare industry, earning $47,000 a year with debts totaling $87,000 and a net worth of about $8,000. Jessica is not registered with either political party but will keep voting for the Democrats in the foreseeable future. She does not consider herself a feminist, rather she sees herself as a Christian and believes in god, heaven and hell. Quite intriguing.
So who exactly is the Common Person in India? Significantly, the Saturday Evening Post article highlighted that the American government was not chosen by Average Americans. “Even if all the Jessicas in America voted the same way, they simply don’t outnumber all the non-Jessicas,” the article stated. Therefore, from a political perspective, it may be preferable for the definition of an aam aadmi or aurat to be broad and inclusive rather than just that of the ‘median person’.
Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta
