India: between reality and image

India is considered a rising economic power and is also commonly referred to as the “largest democracy in the world.” Meanwhile, of the 770 million people living in rural areas, 27% live beneath the poverty line, or on less than 1,5 euros ($1.94) per day.

How does one explain the disparity between an image of a country that has brought forth new technology and economic success and a reality full of poverty and extreme marginalization for much of its population??

The caste system that governs India has created a strongly hierarchical and stratified society. For centuries, this elitist system has assured ritual domination, as well as socio-economic and political domination by the higher castes.

Officially banned in the Constitution of 1947, the element of “untouchability” is still a determining factor in discrimination today by social, political, economic, and cultural organization in India.

If destiny made you a member of an OBC family (“other backwards class:” a social class viewed as “less developed” from a social and educational standpoint,) from the untouchable or Dalit or aborigine castes, your life would be shaped by privations, humiliations, and difficulties in accessing basic resources such as education, healthcare, decent wages, and the ability to exercise other fundamental rights.

In challenging what is not a destiny and by refusing the arbitrariness of their social rank, this marginalized people have organized at last to demand recognition of their citizenship, and the right to exercise and defend it.

Ekta Parishad, a Ghandian movement founded in 1991 and a partner of Frères des Hommes, supports them in their daily struggle in the eight Indian states in which they are established. This fieldwork with the most marginalized populations is combined with an effort to lobby government officials and directors to modify, in a profound and sustainable manner, the mechanisms that regulate the country and produce these striking inequalities.

“Janadesh” the march for access to land is an important step in the fight of the marginalized people for the implementation of their rights at a national level.

Indeed, the access to resources is a proven and effective method of fighting poverty, the ability to access and hold a decent job and to be recognized as a full citizen, capable of taking destiny in hand.

Sabine Benjamin

Translation Jordan MARIL