The  Idea  of  Progress  

INDIA  ON  THE  MOVE  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INDIA  -­‐  Facts  &  Figures  

History: One of the earliest civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization flourished on the Indian subcontinent from c. 2600 B.C. to c. 2000 B.C. It is generally accepted that the Aryans entered India c. 1500 B.C. from the northwest, finding a land that was already home to an advanced civilization. They introduced Sanskrit and the Vedic religion, a forerunner of Hinduism. Buddhism was founded in the 6th century B.C. and was spread throughout northern India, most notably by one of the great ancient kings of the Mauryan dynasty, Asoka (c. 269–232 B.C. ), who also unified most of the Indian subcontinent for the first time.

Government: Federal republic. President: Pranab Mukherjee (2012) Prime Minister: Narendra Modi (2014)

Geography: One-third the area of the United States, the Republic of India occupies most of the subcontinent of India in southern Asia. It borders on China in the northeast. Other neighbors are Pakistan on the west, Nepal and Bhutan on the north, and Burma and Bangladesh on the east.

Land area: 1,147,949 sq mi (2,973,190 sq km); total area: 1,269,338 sq mi (3,287,590 sq km)

Capital: New Delhi

Most Populated Cities in India:

Rank City* Population 2014 Population 2001

1 Delhi 24,953,000 13,850,507

2 Mumbai 20,741,000 16,434,386

3 Calcutta 14,766,000 13,205,697

4 Hyderabad 11,458,741 5,742,036

5 Bangalore 10,839,725 5,701,446

6 Chennai 9,121,477 6,560,242

7 Ahmedabad 7,368,614 4,525,013

8 Jaipur 6,612,914 1,518,200

9 Surat 5,748,238 2,811,614

10 Pune 5,571,419 3,760,636 *Refers to the urban agglomeration, which would also count the surrounding urban areas in the total.

Monetary unit: Rupee

Economy: Unemployment: 8.8% (2013 est.).

Labor force: 487.6 million (2012); agriculture 19%, services 54.7%, industry 26.3% (2010).

Major trading partners: U.S., UAE, China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Singapore (2011)

Communications: Mobile phone subscribers: 886 million (2014).

Internet hosts: 6.746 million compared to 505 million in the United States (2012).

Internet users: 354 million in June 2015 compared to 205 in October 2013.

 

 

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INSIDE  INDIA’S  SILICON  VALLEY  

Transcript:

This is Electronics City in Bengaluru the new name for Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley.

It is home to hundreds of IT companies, home-grown businesses like Wipro and Tata to global companies like Microsoft and IBM. Indeed, a third of India's IT workforce works on this particular campus. And what goes on here is the reason why India’s software industry is predicted to be worth 12 billion dollars by the year 2015.

Infosys Technologies was started with just 250 dollars in 1981. Three decades on, the company has offices in 33 countries employing a hundred and twenty-eight thousand people. Its founder and chairman, Narayan Murthy, has a personal wealth of 1.6 billion dollars.

AMERICANS  LOOKING  FOR  JOBS  IN  INDIA  

TRANSCRIPT:  

Published in September 2010

Can Americans still pursue their dreams and make decent wages in a country with high unemployment rates? More Americans have decided to leave this country in search of a new dream half way around the world. RT Correspondent Priya Sridhar travelled to India where many Americans have found the new land of opportunities. She explains that Indians feel proud that so many people from around the world want to come to India for jobs.  

Correspondent: It’s Thursday morning in Bangalore and the morning bustle is just beginning. But beyond the bustle, on the other side of Bangalore, a different kind of morning is underway a quiet morning at the centre of what's being called India's IT boom.

Colin Murphy: “There's definitely a sense of excitement here and things are looking up for India and even throughout this recession things have remained positive here and you can’t really say the same thing about the States.”

Correspondent: For Colin Murphy that excitement drove him here to the campus of one of India's biggest IT companies Infosys. The 43-acre self-contained community boasts 21st century architecture, gourmet dining and environmentally friendly transportation for the outsourcing giant’s employees Separated from the pollution and chaos of Bangalore life, this oasis provides a look at a new emerging India that is attracting the best and brightest from India and now from the U.S. too.

Brianna Dieter: “We have students from Stanford, students from Harvard, students from MIT, they get to understand what is Infosys, what's the IT industry, and because most of the internships are based in India, what is India. And part of that is just about breaking myths and misconceptions.”

Correspondent: It's an ironic twist, after decades of what was called the Indian brain drain, a new era has begun, one in which thousands of Americans are packing up their things and finding better jobs in this land of new opportunity.

 

 

A  FIGHT  FOR  LIFE  IN  INDIA  

TRANSCRIPT:  

Chandni Chowk is the name for the historical main road in Delhi. In the morning, beggars line the streets waiting for food. They're also tended to by a consulting doctor working free of charge.

The cyclists only have time to momentarily process the situation but for tour guide Shashi, it is an integral part of Indian society and has been for centuries.

Shashi: « It's not something new, it hasn't developed like from the last couple of years but it's a legacy of the feudal system which used to exist in India long, long years ago. And especially in this system the feudal lords they used to own the big resources. They used to own the land and on the other side there used to be the labour class. The labour would never have any resources. Of course, India has got the nuclear power, which very few countries in the world have. So, I think this is the biggest achievement. On the other hand, I think India needs to more focus on its poverty, on its economic problems to make the poor rich, to give them resources. I think those should be the priorities. »

For these people with no education, struggling to fulfil basic needs is as elementary as having enough food, clean water, and fresh air. The economic boom brought on by nuclear power is a pure number’s game. Just how sustainable is a society built on such a stark imbalance between the haves and have-nots?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOCUMENT  A  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEXT A

The first thing I ever learned about India was that my parents had chosen to leave it.

My cousins in India would sometimes ask if I was Indian or American.

“American,” I would say, because it was the truth, and because it felt that to say otherwise would be to accept a lower berth in the world.

I moved to India six years ago in an effort to understand it on my own terms, to render mine what had until then only belonged to my parents.

India was changing when I arrived and has changed dramatically, viscerally, improbably in these 2,000 days: farms giving way to factories: ultra-cheap cars being built; companies buying out rivals abroad. But the greatest change I have witnessed is elsewhere. It is in the mind: Indians now know that they don’t have to leave, as my parents left, to have their personal revolutions.

It took me time to see. At first, my old lenses were still in place – India the frustrating, difficult country – and so I saw only the things I had ever seen.

But as I traveled the land, the data did not fit the framework. The children of the lower castes were hoisting themselves up one diploma and training program at a time. The women were becoming breadwinners through microcredit and decentralized manufacturing. The young people were finding in their cellphones a first zone of individual identity. The couples were ending marriages no matter what “society” thinks, then finding love again. The vegetarians were embracing meat and meat-eaters were turning vegetarian, defining themselves by taste and faith, not caste.

Indians from languorous villages to pulsating cities were making difficult new choices to die other than where they were born, to pursue vocations not their father’s, to live lives imagined within their own skulls. And it was addictive, this improbable rush of hope.

The shift is only just beginning. Most Indians still live impossibly grim lives. Trickle down, here more than most places, is slow. But it is a shift in psychologies, and you rarely meet an Indian untouched by it. […]

[Indians] no longer angrily berate America, because they are too busy building their own country. Indian accents are now cooler than British ones. No one asks if I feel Indian or American. How delicious to see that unconcern. How fortunate to live in a land you needn’t leave to become your fullest possible self.

Anand GIRIDHARADAS, “Farewell to an Indian I Hardly Knew”, in The New York Times (July 4th 2009)

TEXT B

Why girls in India are being killed

Clutching husband Rajesh’s hand, 20-year-old Nilima stares at a monitor displaying grainy black and white swirls. She’s 20 weeks pregnant and they’re in a small clinic in Jaipur, the capital of the western Indian state of Rajasthan, about to see an image of their unborn baby for the first time.

Her husband has his eyes glued to the monitor as the doctor examines the foetus’ heart and vital details to check its growth and health. But there’s one thing Rajesh, a businessman, wants to know more than anything else – the sex of their child.

When the scan is over, the doctor leads Rajesh and Nilima to his office where he gives them the news – their unborn baby is a girl. The disappointment on both the parents’ faces is evident. While Nilima’s eyes well up because she knows what her fate and that of her unborn child will be, Rajesh quietly takes the doctor to a corner of his office.

Seeing both of them speak in hushed tones, Nilima knows what is being discussed: an abortion. She is reluctant to undergo one, but she knows she will be forced to by her husband and his parents.

They all want a boy. If she protests, she will be tortured until she agrees, or forced by other means to get rid of the child growing inside her. And if, by some luck, she does have the child, the chances of it being allowed to live would be thin – it would very likely be killed.

Sadly Nilima is not alone. Thousands of pregnant women in India are reportedly forced by their husbands and in-laws to undergo sex-determination tests, and if the foetus is found to be female, get it aborted.

Taken from Gulf News, January 3, 2013

TEXT C

Where are India's millions of missing girls?

India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.

Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.

In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.

Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.

"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."

Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.

Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.

"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.

India outlawed dowries in 1961, but the practice remains rampant and the value of dowries is constantly growing, affecting rich and poor alike.

From http://www.bbc.co.uk, May 23, 2011