Places & Forms of power

We see in a video that the outcaste, or the Untouchable or Dalit is condemned to do menial tasks and disgusting chores. They are street sweepers, scavengers of human‘s evacuations without any adapted equipment, any safety. They are ill-treated by the others caste as a normal thing. Some women are raped; men cleaned the sewer and died out of poisonous gas. The Indian system condemns them to poverty and misery .

However, their fate and awful living conditions is denounced by some Indian people who have broken with this system. Most of them are poor people who tried to get a chance abroad.

Beside, a Bangladeshi economist, Muhammad Yunus, invented the system of micro finance to allow poor entrepreneurs to build their business with small loans.

We also see that, in India, women suffer sexism and murderer because of tradition. Having a daughter is not profitable particularly when you are poor since you have to pay a dowry for her marriage. This tradition is a cause of infanticide in India where 6 hundred thousand girls are missing every year. An international campaign led by a woman, Rita Banerjy and denouncing women missing aims to denounce these crimes. It is called: “50 million missing”. It denounces:

girl infanticide,

dowry related murder and

Gendercide practices.

The gender gap is so official and traditional in India that it will take a long before women be considered equal in this society because tradition condemns them to be submissive.

However, struggle for equality and against abuses of power is part and parcel of India history. During the colonial time, there was a division between those who have and exercise power, i.e. the British settlers and those who have none or little of it; I mean the Indian people.

Mahatma Gandhi fought against the British colonial domination as of 1922. India became an independent country in 1947 and Gandhi is now a role model of non-violent struggle. Now in the 21th century, the struggle is for equality between girls and boys, women and men, love and hate, live and death.

What is the most striking about India is that it is an emerging country. Today while 50 million women missing India is the biggest call center of the world, a place good for foreign invests, Bollywood movies are famous. Some places are very modern with window glass buildings and some of those buildings are big technologies companies’ headquarters. Facebook is used on cheap smartphones in Mumbai slums, girls wear western clothes. India is a country of contradictions. The old order is shaken by westernization and globalization which represent the counter power in India. Nevertheless, all citizens are not in an equal footing in modern India.

Another place of power is the world economy. Indeed economy is led by big companies from rich countries that care less about the planet. All they want is money and more money at any cost. Thus, companies like oil companies are targeted by environmental organization about the pollution they generate. They threaten wild life and they are also the human kind. As a matter of fact, Green Peace, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) fights against pollution, against oil companies, industrial sites, nuclear industry, in brief against all that generate money and represent power in the world and that endanger the planet.

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