Lieux et formes de pourvoir - Oral

India on the move

Intro :

        I am going to talk about the notion of locations and forms of power. Power is the ability to exercise a control on somebody, but it leads generally to conflict between those who have power and those who haven't. I chose to illustrate this notion through the citizens of India. So we may wonder, are all citizens on an equal footing in modern-day India ?

        First of all, I am going to speak about inequalities among citizens in India. Indeed in India, there is the caste system. The document “The Dalits” shows that the caste system is a division of society into four hereditary social classes.

The Brahman caste is the highest and the Dalits are excluded from the caste system because they practice degrading jobs (according to the Indians) such as the butchers or the midwives who are in direct contact with blood, wich is considered impure. In this category we can also find beggars, hunters, fishermen ...

The ideology of the caste is to affirm that men are fundamentally unequal and that each individual has the duty to accomplish his task, that was attributed to him in relation to his rank and in relation to his birth. One who is born in a caste can not change it. Even today, people have to get married with someone of the same caste.

Moreover, the document “A country on the march” says that 17% people describe themselves as "thriving", 64% of Indians believe they are  "struggling", while 19% think they are "suffering".

The document says also that 42% of Indians are living below 80p a day, while there are 55 billionaires in India. It is the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of millionaires. These percentages show that there is a big difference between the rich and the poor in India. The gap between the rich and the poor is one of the largest in the world.

        Furthermore there are also inequalities among men and women. In fact, when a woman marries, her parents must pay the groom's parents it is called the dowry, it is a compensation for the cost of groom's education, while the woman receives nothing. The dowry does not pay in direct money, but in the form of gifts.

If after the marriage the woman's family does not keep its promise, the bride is subject to torture, and sometimes even killed. Sometimes, the woman is killed by setting her on fire, which is disguised as an accident.

Because of this tradition, many Indian families don't want daughters. Indeed, there is a “gendercide” in India. The document “The two Indias” says that there are 940 (nine hundred and forty) girls aged six and under for every 1000 (thousand) boys and 600 000 girls go missing every year. There is also the document “Another girl” which is an extract from the novel “Secret Daughter” of Somaya Gowda. This extract tells the story of Kavita who gives birth to a girl.

Her husband tells her that they can not keep her because they will not have enough money to pay for a dowry when she is old enough to marry.

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