Lieux et formes de pouvoirs: Tous les citoyens sont-ils sur un pied d'égalité dans l'Inde moderne? (document en anglais)

Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern-day India ?

Nowadays, the world is changing. Some sorts of power are claiming in some Arabic and African countries; and on the contrary, some countries like India are getting bigger and bigger day by day. So, the notion I’m going to deal with is Places and Forms of Power. I’ve chosen to base this notion on that following problematic: Are all citizens on an equal footing in modern day India ? In the first part of my talk, we’ll see that India’s population is undergoing inequalities everyday; then we’ll study the status of the woman in that country; and then we’ll examine the evolution of some countries as India or China.

First of all, India is the 2nd most populous country in the world after China. It means that to a certain extent, a big part of India’s population is living into a country of inequalities.

Let’s take the case of the caste system. India is probably one of the few country in the world with a society divided in 5 parts; from the untouchables, also named the Dalits, to the Brahman, the highest caste... Discriminations against Dalits have mainly disappeared in modern cities like Mumbai or Delhi, but are still there into villages, or rural areas. Just like Apartheid, the Untouchables are avoided by the upper grades: they need to eat, to learn at school or to pray in other areas. To emphasize this problem, I can quote some numbers: there are about 170 million Dalits living in India nowadays. And 40% of them are living with less than 2$ a day...

Secondly, to focus on the status of the woman in India, I’ve chosen to take the document studied in class, which is Another Girl, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.

Indeed, in India, there’s a demographic crisis in relation to the number of girls: thus, there’d would more than 35millions men than women ! In the text studied; the problem shown is the infanticides overly numerous in rural areas. In fact in this text, a woman has just given birth to a baby girl, but her husband is getting upset and angry because of the dowry they won’t receive... Families also want a boy to keep the family name.

We can also say that there’s a male domination in that country. Thus, Indian society has always been patriarchal, with male dominance conspicuous in every aspect of social life For centuries, Women were deprived of the right to be educated, were confined within the four walls of the house, to take care of the home and the children, subjected hence, to a life of silent endurance and subservience to the men in the family. Till the beginning of the twentieth century, a woman who lost her husband also lost the right to lead a decent, normal life, and was condemned to a life of deprivation, solitude and misery, as an outcast of society with no right to remarry. Violence was common and a number of women were targets of abuse after bouts of drunkenness, but they couldn’t say anything.

Finally, India is a known as one of the best country in the world for Its Technological and Engineering Pool. In fact, the country has the 2nd largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world. Thus, the sector of services has increased up to 62,9% of the gross domestic product from 1990 to 2009.

In a nutshell, India is a country which is increasing and developing day by day. Its population is a multicultural and

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