Seats and forms of Power - Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern day India?

Anglais –  Seats and forms of Power

INTRODUCTION 

• Today, I'm going to present the notion « Seats and forms of power » by trying to answer the question “Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern day India?” and by using the example using the example of India.

• First let me give a quick definition of the notion. In politics and social science, power is the ability to influence the behavior of people. In order to live together members of a community accept rules, regulations, laws. This helps to create social cohesion but can also lead to conflicts and tensions as there are always counter-powers which question it and aim at limiting its excesses and resist it.

• In a first part, we will see a country with/of deep inequalities. And then in a second and final part we will study a situation which is improving.

PART 1

• Let's begin with my first part: “a country with/of deep inequalities”. Nowadays, India is one of the world's biggest and powerful emerging countries, and little by little is on his way to modernity and progress, but India is also a country which suffers of severe inequalities.

• One of India's most important problem is probably the severe inequalities between women and men. In India, being a woman is far from being easy and pleasant. Women haven't the same access to education than men and can't do the same jobs. For example, the literacy rate is lower for women than for men (74.4% vs 88.4%). India also suffers from gendercide, the murder of someone because of this sex. In three generations, more than 50 million women were eliminated from india's population through infanticide, dowry related murders and other gendercide practices. In India 600.000 (six hundred thousands) girls go missing every year. The number of woman in India is degrading, in 2011 there were 940 girls for 1000 boys. But these practices are a problem, in the future there will not be enough woman, India will be short of 10 million brides.

• These gendercides and inequalities are for the most part related to the dowry tradition which is still very present in the Indian society. The dowry is a large sum of money a girl's parents have to pay to the boy's family when they get married, as compensation for the cost of educating their son. But most of the time the sum is that expensive that people can hardly afford it, and poor families often get broke because of the dowry. If parents can't pay after the wedding, brides are often subjects to torture, suicide and even killed. That's one of the reasons that explains why many Indian parents prefers to have boys. Having a baby girl is less interesting for them, a girl can't work to bring money home, have to pay a dowry to get married and can't help her family as men can do. These arguments can push families to practice self-selective abortions, or to abandon or kill their daughter. The government has taken many steps to stop this practice but it is deeply rooted in the Indian society. The text extract of Secret Daughter studied in class, shows us an example of discriminations against girls, a couple who has just welcome a baby girl have to decide to keep or not their daughter, and the mother, Kavita is heartbroken faced with the choice of her husband who doesn't want to keep her.  

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