Who is the common man?

This is a rejoinder to an article in the Indian Express...

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=79647

I have been an avid reader of IE for a long time now. Now that I have moved to Bangalore, I have shifted to Hindu. My belief is that, these two are the only newspapers who have an obligation towards the society and most important believe in real journalism.
I have been following your saturday special editorials and the latest "Our Poor Little Rich" is one of the best so far. And it is with regards to that article that I intend to make my observations.
I have been brought up in a communist environment, as in my family believes that they are the only party who fight for the working class and poor etc. Most of the people I know also follow the same ideology. I know that you do not approve of what the commies are doing.
Maybe influenced by the people whom I interacted, I also have a lot of respect to the red brigade at least in some issues. This has happened over a period of time, influenced by a lot of incidents and happenings in Kerala and maybe all over india. To give you a small example, it would not be wrong to say that the movies made in India (atleast in Kerala) are representative of what is happening in the society or what they think. There have been numerous movies made on the heroics of communist revolutions in Kerala, political potboilers where the heroes are always the communist party and the villains the congress party. You might argue that no one is interested in making a movie with the opposite point of view, but I think it is because they do not have anything to speak of like this.
I have a lot of arguments with my friends on a lot of political issues pertaining to the commies. Be it the issues of fighting for the issue of Fee structure in private medical/engineering colleges in Kerala, Voting out Iran, All India Strike etc etc. But when I go home, I take the other side and argue against the commies, with my dad and uncle. So this time we were doing this exercise and we were discussing the lack of private airline penetration in Kerala. My argument was that due to lack of any business activity (Commies are blamed for this) in kerala you do not have that much air traffic and hence less airlines. These are supposed to bring air travel to the common man at an affordable price. So my uncle gave me an interesting, at the same time thought provoking argument.
He told me, "If Jet Airways start 2 airlines to Trivandrum, you would say, if only they could start 2 more flights, then I can have more choice to go home. It is not going to hit the common man if he gets a air ticket for 1000 rupees less. The issue is bigger than that, the common man is hit if you increase the bus ticket by 50 paise. It is important to decide who your common man is." All this while I thought I was from a middle class family and I should be representative of the common man. But I think I am wrong, the majority of the people in India are below the poverty line and it does not matter to them if you decrease the air fare, but it hits them hard if you increase the bus charge by 50 paise. We need to take a rethink. I guess me and my friend's are not facing the issues that stare at the face of a common man. We are no longer the common man.