Tous les citoyens sont-ils sur un pied d'égalité dans l'Inde moderne? (document en anglais)

I am going to present the notion Seats and Forms of Power. First, I would like to give a definition of the notion: power is the ability to exercise authority and influences over others. We can find it under lot of forms and in every country around the world. To illustrate this notion, we have taken India for example and we can wonder if all of Indian citizens are on an equal footing today?

We have seen that India’s girls go missing. In fact, India is becoming an increasingly male dominated society, the number of girls is an all-time low. We saw that 600,000 girls go missing every year. That’s resulting in a rising number of gender-selective abortions even if it’s illegal. There, there are twice as many boys as girls. The trend of more boys is a national reality and not a coincidence. They do admit having a boy is more attractive financially especially when it comes to the Indian practices of the dowry given by the bride’s family to the groom’s family. So, the dowry tradition handicaps the poor people because it cost too much for families with daughters.

In India there are lots of inequalities among rich and poor. Indeed, the cast system is so unfair: there are not middle class, people are rich or poor. At the other end of the social ladder, the Dalits are not members of a cast, they are outcasts. Dalits are only allowed certain jobs such as cleaners. Discrimination against Untouchables still exists in this country. They are 170 million Dalits in India today. Less than a third are literate, well over 40 percent survive on less than 2 pounds a day. We learnt that microcredit is supposed to help them but it’s still insufficient. It was designed to give them an income and some control of their lives. Indeed, it was originally designed to develop their business. But, we can conclude by saying that microcredit it sometimes misused for basic needs. Therefore, some pads of the population are now in debt and won’t be able to pay off what they owe.

More than inequalities among rich and poor, there are also inequalities between men and women. The text Another Girl is a good example. In fact, we see a woman who gives birth to a baby girl and her husband clearly wants her to be killed or abandoned. The women have no authority and can do nothing against their husband. That’s why women run away when they can. Furthermore, most people who work in country’s government are men because women can’t have the right to work. There, men decide, they dominate the society.

However, India is changed and it’s going to turn into a modern country. In fact, we seen that farms giving way to factories, ultra-cheap cars being built, and the women were becoming breadwinners through microcredit and decentralized manufacturing. Couples were ending marriages no matter what society thinks. Now, people live lives as they want. They don’t have to emigrate in order to achieve their dreams. Indians are now very proud of their country. In addition, we seen the example of a young CEO of a global software solutions who founded it when he was 14 and it shows his remarkable achievement which it’s help India’s economy because his company operate in 11 countries.

To conclude, we can say that there are two faces in this country: poor India and rich India. On the one hand, its GPD (GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT) does not stop increasing every year, there are 69 billionaires, the middle class does not stop growing every year

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