L'idée de progrès

The “Idea of Progress” basically consists in believing that the world can become better in terms of arts, science, technology, liberty and quality of life and has shaped most of Western civilisation’s vision of history. We can say that we have perhaps witnessed more changes in the last 20 years than our ancestors did in the last 200.

So, the subject of my oral presentation is about Indian. I’m going to talk about an India on the move, an India who is changing, an India who is becoming a powerful country.

We can ask ourselves how did India change radically to a thriving superpower.

Progress implies some changes, some evolution from an old order with old traditions to a new order. If a country could represent this evolution, we need to talk about India and her incredible story. Indeed, India rose from British colonization in the 18th century to a democratic country that has many things to offers to its 1,2billion population that represents 17,5% of the world population.

Well, thanks to her technical progress and the renewal of her productivity equipment, India is now one of the most important country in the world. In fact, the Indian economy is the 10th in the world global nominal domestic product (GDP), thanks to the creation of high-tech cities as we’ve seen in class, such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and Cyberabad.

Those cities are the main reason why the economic sector has known a growth of 8% annually since 2004.

On the other hand, the creation of the microcredit by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohammed Yunnes was a complete revolution for India. This system that offers the opportunity for extremely poor women to make ends meets is the reason of a growth of 70% annually in the industrial sector. Thereby, millions of women used microcredit to provide for their family and the government encouraged those people to know some kind of improvement in their daily lives.

To continue to illustrate this “Idea of Progress”, I’m now going to talk about the text that we studied in class, which is an extract from the newspaper “The New York Times” in 2009. This text perfectly illustrates the actual situation in India. In this text, the narrator who left India for the United States of America returns to her homeland and describes all of the changes that occurred in her original country. In this long list of changes, we can principally notice that the economy is growing thanks to the multiplication of factories, industries, companies and so one… We can also remark that Indians has known a shift in their psychologies. Indeed, they are now enjoying the taste of their liberty, their freedom. They can now make their own choices, shape their personalities as they want to and grab hold of their destinies. Those things were inconceivable in the past, but now, Indians don’t have to leave their country to know some kind of improvement in their daily lives. They can find whatever they want to in India.

To conclude, I want to say that however, India is far from being a homogeneous country. Indeed, there are a lot of problems to fix in this country such as infanticide or the poverty of the majority of the population. But India is changing… changing radically. Indians are now more open-minded, womens have rights and can work thanks to microcredit and the society is more lenient… So it perfectly

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