| India is (after
China) the second most populous country in the world, and as the
Indians are always so fond of saying, the biggest democracy on earth.
It’s huge, it’s vast, the area it covers is roughly
that of Western Europe (or even a bit bigger). As big as India is
it is diverse - diverse in all respects:
• in languages:
there are 22 official languages recognised by the constitution plus
another estimated 1600 minor languages and dialects spoken. Although
Hindi is the official national language, only about 20% of India’s
populace speak it as a mother tongue. It is widely spoken in the
North, but most people you’ll meet in the South won’t
speak Hindi at all. That’s one of the reasons (British imperialism
being the other) English is so widely spoken and serves as a lingua
franca.
• in religion:
a massive number of religions are represented among India’s
population. 81.3% of the population is Hindu (by the way, you have
to be born a Hindu, you can’t convert to Hinduism), 12% Muslim,
2.3 % Christian (a lot of whom are former Hindus of the scheduled
class (untouchables) who converted to get out of the caste system),
1.9% Sikh (easily recognisable by their turban and their surname
Singh if it’s a man or Kaur if it’s a woman), 0.4% Jain
(a religion founded in India around 500 BC), 0.01% Zoroastrians
or Parsis (an ancient Persian religion); and even a few Jews can
be found in Kochi, where there is a tiny old Jewish community which
was established about 2000 years ago.
• in people:
the looks, their clothes, their religious ceremonies, their art,
their culture, their kind of life varies immensely depending on
where you are. A mongoloid featured Buddhist Ladakhi in the North
doesn’t have anything in common with a dark skinned Hindu
Dravidian of the South.
• in transport:
all kinds of vehicles can be seen, depending on where you are: the
sturdy Ambassador car (an old relic from the British, known in England
as the Morris Oxford), colourful and overloaded Tata trucks with
threadbare tyres, the ubiquitous Maruti car, flashy new Four-Wheel-Drives,
bullock carts, horse carts, camel carts, elephants, auto-rickshaws,
cycle-rickshaw, you name it…
Political System
 |
|
| ©neoncarrot |
|
India
parliament building in New Delhi
|
|
India is a constitutional democracy with a
Parliament consisting of two houses: the lower house, "Lok
Sabha" (House of the people), whose 545 members are normally
elected every 5 years in the General Election and the upper house,
"Rajya Sabha" (Council of State) with 245 members, which
are elected or appointed in different ways. The President is elected
by both houses and the states legislature every five years.
After 6 continuous years of the right wing
BJP-led NDA as the governing coalition, the general election in
May 2004 swept the Congress party and allies back into power in
a surprise election result that shocked the nation. The Congress
party formed a government at the head of the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) coalition under India's first Sikh Prime Minister,
Manmohan Singh, who was sworn in on the 22 May 2004. As of 25 July
2007 the president is Pratibha Patil, successor to the former rocket
scientist APJ Kalam.
Women’s position
By law women and men have equal rights. Practically
it looks different though. The dowry system (even though illegal)
is still widely spread. Very often families prefer boys to girls.
Female infanticide still happens, prenatal sex determination (made
illegal in the 1990s) is easily obtainable with the result that
if it turns out to be a girl, it’ll be aborted. This of course
causes problems: India is one of the few countries in the world
where there are more men then women. The national sex ratio is about
935 females to 1000 males, that means in effect that there are roughly
30 million men (more than half of the UKs population!), who won’t
be able to find a wife. In some areas the gender ratio is alarming,
as for example in Chandigarh where there are 790 women to 1000 men.
Kirsten Mar 03 / updated May 04, Aug
07 |
