Places and forms of power (oral anglais)

The notion I’m going to deal with is « Places and forms of power ». I would like to illustrate this notion through India because it’s an emerging country, precisely the second most populous country in the world, and I found interesting to study this country with the problematic: Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern India?

Firstly, I will talk about inequalities among citizens in general, then I will focus on the inequalities among men and women, and I will finish talking about the evolution of India.

In India, there is a Castes system, which divides the society into four unequal social classes.  All the classes are hereditary and, more, when you born in one of this four classes you have to stay in this caste for all your life. You can’t even marry with someone of an other caste. The Brahman caste is the highest. At the other end of the social ladder, the Dalits or Untouchables. They are not even members of a caste; we can tell that they are outcastes. They are only allowed certain jobs such as cleaners or cobblers. Even thought discrimination against Dalits has almost disappeared in urban areas, they still exists in rural areas where the Dalits are obliged to use specific eating places, schools, temple and water sources.

Everyone knows that India is an emerging country. Even its seems a good point, the development of this country create more inequalities and particularly a separation between riches and poors. (Like we can see on the video « The great Indian dream », there is a real confrontation between riches and poors. There are people who live in bad condition, in slum (bidonville) whereas the neighbourhood quarter gathers big building with businessman.

        So, we’ve seen that, in India, there are inequalities among citizens in general but we are going to see that there are also inequalities between men and women.

Women are from a long time ago, in situation of inferiority compared to men. Indeed, men occupy the top positions and hold most of the power, in the family, in the community, in society. Women are restricted to domestic roles. They just can’t take any decisions, have a job or have access to education. They simply have to obey to the man and give birth.

More, they are considered as a constraint compared to men. At birth, each family wants there be a son who can look after the family business, look after the family name and also look after the parents when they are old. Almost all parents don’t want a girl because of the dowry tradition. The dowry is a sum of money given by the bride’s family to the husband’s family as compensation to the boy’s education. Parents don’t want a girl also because she can’t help them on the fields like the boys do. To resume, parents don’t want a girl simply because they cost money then they don’t bring back. So the consequences are that many girls are abandoned at birth or even killed. We called this phenomenon as « Gendercide ». The text « another girl » is a perfect example of this phenomenon. The couple has already a girl and the woman give birth to an other girl. Her husband explains that they financially can’t support a second girl, so he wants to abandon the baby girl.

        We’ve just seen that India is a country of inequalities at once (à la fois) between citizens in general and between men and women. But we’re going to see that his development enable a light improvement of inequalities. (Son development permet une légère amélioration des inégalités dans ce pays.)

India is in evolution. On the one hand, there is a changing economy. The text changing India explains that today some women have good jobs, they become breadwinners through microcredit. India has also technology firms, and great engineering. There is a film industry, Bollywood.

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