Can we say today's India is a modern country ?

I’m going to deal with the idea of progress which can be defined as a technical, scientific or social advance or a change, contributing in making the world a better place. I would like to illustrate this notion through the theme of modern India. India is a country located in southern Asia, the second most populated and the seventh-largest country in the world.

I will present you this notion with the aid of three documents: an excerpt from the SEE Change Magazine “is microcredit changing India?”, a file of different graphs which highlight the growth of India “a country on the march” and an article from The New York Times written by Anand Giridharadas “Changing India”.

Nowadays, India is growing after a long period of poverty. Therefore, can we say today’s India is a modern country?

I will first talk about a country on the move. Then, I will illustrate the discrepancies still existing in India.

On the one hand, India is a country on the move, developing its industrial sector, making cultural progress and achieving financial advances.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, India comes a long way to prosper on the industrial plan. In 2009, the gross domestic product of India has increased thanks to services above all. Indeed, the Indian government tries hard to boost services to encourage tourism, as we can see in the bar chart of the file “A country on the march”. What’s more, thanks to technical progress, India is now the first world exporter of IT services. Cities like Hyberabad, Bangalore or Silicon India contribute in making Indian economy the tenth in the world rank for the gross domestic product : the economic sector grows by 8per cent per year since 2004.The rural world gives way little by little to industries, as says Anand Giridharadas.

The Indian shift is also visible culturally. India shares its culture with Bollywood movies which emphasize their traditions. Furthermore, the change is also in the minds: Indians become westernized achieving their wishes without taking care of Indian society. For instance, an Indian couple is now ending marriage though Indian society contests this method. Indians break with fate, refusing to be chained up to their caste.

Then, the Indian progress extends in the financial level too. The government tries to decrease the gap between billionaires and those who live on less than 1dollard a day setting up microfinance, concept proposed by the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus : “small loans are given to poor entrepreneurs financially unable to secure traditional bank loans” as we can read in the document “Is microcredit changing India?”. This project permits women to become breadwinners, although it was totally inconceivable before.

In other words, India is changing dramatically but the shift is only just beginning and many discrepancies still exist.

On the other hand, India is a country of contrasts due to religion issues, social gaps and sex-selection.

First, Hinduism is the first religion in India and it divides the society in castes. When someone is born in a caste, he can’t change of caste. The system of castes causes issues because it checks the progress: an untouchable, the lower caste, can’t study in same schools than others and discriminatory traditions still prevail. But, sometimes, success stories happen, like Suhas Gopinath who is the youngest CEO (chief executive official) of a software global company.

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