LA Stendhal, le rouge et le noir

Legende : blue : Yasmin / orange: Ines / Pink: amine / black: yahya

In spite of being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, India has to face major social and ecological challenges. If we all have this image of an overcrowded poor and ecologically unfriendly country, it is due to real problems in India. however, we will see that India is really improving on these fields. In order to tackle this subject we will separate the ecological issue from the social one. Let’s start right now with pollution in India.

I° Pollution

India is the third country in term of greenhouse gas emissions, that is why it has to face a major challenge when it comes to environment. The most recent catastrophe dates from November 2018, New Delhi, the Indian capital, has recorded one pf the highest levels of air pollution: 1000 micrograms per cubic meter. It is 40 times the level recommended by the WHO (world health organization). This record is due to the great amount of cars in the city, but it reflects a global situation especially owed to the numerous coal factories all over the country. So what does India to solve this issue that causes a decrease of 4 years of life expectancy to every Indian.

First of all, India is an emerging country and as all the others emerging countries, people can’t afford expensive energy resources, so the government firstly turned itself to the cheapest resource, which is coal. In addition, India has a dependance of 60% when it comes to coal in order to respond to the increasing request as the population number don’t stop going up.

Anyway, since Paris Agreement and after long hours of negotiations, the Indian government managed to get grands and subventions to invest in sustainable energies. Narenda Modi, the Indian prime minister is engaged in this race against fossil fuels. An agreement has also been signed between Paris and Delhi. Paris benefits from high solar technologies whereas Delhi has a high solar potential. This agreement allows by the way France to invest in India in this field.

Consequently, Indian has now one of the most ambitious energetic transition projects in the world. Today, India produces 62GW of sustainable energies whereas 175GW are predicted for 2022. It counts on solar energy to become the first national energy resource, 100GW by 2022. To fulfill their goal, India carries on a series of project such as the photovoltaic power plants in Hindupur which provide 100.000 houses electricity.

II° Poverty

To tackle poverty, we first have to start by defining what poverty means to the international scene.

Poverty is about not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter.  However, poverty is more, much more than just not having enough money. Poverty varies considerably depending on the situation. Feeling poor in Canada is different from living in poverty in Russia or Zimbabwe. Economically speaking, being poor is living with a income under 2$ per day whereas living in extreme poverty is living with less than 1.25$ per day.

Today, in India, 45,9 million Indian is extremely poor while 866 millions are poor. 20 Indian people escape extreme poverty per minute. India has managed to reduce the number of poor from 55% in 1973 to about 27% (326 million poor) in 2004. And today India is no more the poorest country as Nigeria took its place.

Reasons: cast system and The subject of the economic impact of British imperialism on India remains contentious. the economy established by the British in the 18th century was a form of plunder and a catastrophe for India, depleting food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the famine of 1770. Due to continuous rise in population, there is chronic unemployment and under employment in India.The net national income is quite low as compared to size of population.

Farming in India relies heavily on monsoons that bring rainfall and irrigate the land. This means that erratic weather, cyclones, water shortages and droughts all have a huge impact on agriculture and can cause damage to crops.  Other factors that increase the poverty rate include a poor educational system, limited access to medical care, poor or non-existent sex education and a lack of available birth control methods.

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