Idea Of Progress : Is today’s India a modern country?

IDEA OF PROGRESS

I am going to talk about the “Idea of Progress”. To begin with, I am going to define progress. Progress is an improvement, a development or a change in technical, medical or even social contexts. Progress contributes to making the world a better place.

To illustrate the idea of progress, I am going to talk about the evolution of India throughout the years. Is today’s India a modern country?

I° Progress towards a modern India

- Technical and economical advances:

- The capital (Mumbai) is becoming a megacity. It is a sign of the growing economy in India. Also, it is also considered as a multicultural city because of the variety of its cultures and languages.

- There are more and more cities which are evolving. High tech is “invading” India more and more. People believe that it is going to be even more developed in the future. India has great engineering and managerial talent and a great entrepreneurial spirit. Its economy is changing thanks to the development of the high-tech sector.

- solar power improvements for instance

-used to be closed to exchanges with the rest of the world but now it’s easier

- The microcredit system has affected economy because it has helped poor people to get out of poverty by granting small loans which allow them to start a small business.

(doc microcredit)

- Political and social advances:

- Less discrimination against Dalits (Untouchables)

- Poverty seems to have been progressively falling.
Poverty seems to have diminished progressively in India. Indeed, in 1981, 60% of Indian people were living below 1 $ a day, whereas around 20 years later, in 2005, there were 42%. Moreover, a very strong middle class is emerging in India, which is a sign of improvement of Indian living conditions.

- Measures to prevent certain consequences of the dowry system. Because of the dowry system, having a baby girl is less convenient than having a baby boy because you must pay a dowry to get her married and pay for the husband’s education.  So people want to know before the birth if a child is a boy or a girl. There used to be a lot of sex-selective abortions to avoid having girls. Now, they do not allow it anymore, which is at least some progress, even if the dowry system is still quite a popular tradition.

- Doc: success of women in corporate India:

There are more and more job opportunities for women. For instance, in the last two decades, the number of corporate women in the banking sector has risen massively because the ICICI (India’ second largest bank) promotes merit and not gender. They are willing to give jobs to those who are willing to work, whether they ate men or women. They want to make women believe that they can succeed: women will probably gain more rights and equality in relation to men.

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