Seats and forms of power: are all citizens on an equal footing in modern-day India?

The notion i am going to deal with is Seats and forms of power and the subject of my oral presentation will be : Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern-day India?

First of all, we’ll focus on the manu differences between Indian citizens and also in the many inequalities between men and women. Then, we’ll see in what way Indian society is gradually changing.

One should be aware of the fact that in india, there is a system of hierarchy, of social stratification called the caste system. Indian society is divided into four unequal, hereditary social classes or castes. The Brahman caste is the highest whereas the Dalits, often called Untouchables are regarded as outcasts and so, are at the bottom of the social ladder. As a consequence, they have to use specific places to eat, specific schools, temples and water sources. They are 170 millions Dalits among whom less than a third are literate and over 40% survive on less than $2 a day !

It is true to say that in India there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor. In the various documents studied we could see, for example, that India had the 4 highest number of billionaires in the world also that there was a strong emerging middle class that numbers around 300 million people. However, 42% people still live with less than 80p a fay, ie about 1 € a day and almost half of the population lives bellow the poverty line, most of it in overpopulation slums! So poverty is widespread and as result many children are malnourished.

Success stories remain an exception in modern-day India. I remember listening to the stories of two Indian teenagers : on the one hand, a 20 year-old entrepreneur inspired by Bill Gates and at the head of a global software company and, on the other hand a 24 year old Indian who lives in the slums of Delhi and is compelled to sell garbage to earn a meager living.

But there are also inequalities between men and women as is exemplified by the dowry tradition. In india, the wife's family has to give a dowries cannot be paid brides are often murdered or burnt. Nevertheless, from an economic point of view, India is seen as being a country on the march. Its Gross Domestic Product growth is more than 8% every year and « services » is the best sector of activity. There is also a high tech sector with high tech companies which give the image a thriving, business-oriented country. Farms are replaced by factories. Very cheap cars are being built and Indian companies not only compete in India, they also do so abroad.

That change in embodied too by very successful women, some of them being at the forefront of the microcredit movement. These

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women are becoming breadwinners through microcredit which consists in granting them small loans for them to be able to start their own enterprise and so escape poverty.

Regarding the female literacy rate, it is to be noticed that ti is lower than the mal rate ( 64% versus 83% ). Girls become literate thanks to educational programmes. Let’s not forget that women gave played and are still playing a major role in india’s politics : they have been elected twice as head of state : Indira Gandhi was the first female Prime Minister and Pratibha Patil is the first female President of India.

To conclude, one can assert that all India citizens are not on an equal footing though Indian society is gradually

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