India has a population of 1.2 billion, with over 600m under the age of 25, 276 million living with under $1.21 a day and approximately 70 million homeless, 11 million of those children. I wanted to see how the largest democracy in the world operates, I couldn’t imagine it, I still cant, it defies belief and grows.
This democracy is for the rich, and men, when you have half the country working for next to nothing so the privileged can have what they want, in this situation men are not going to change india, women are.
When you have people walking around believing they are better than other people the effect this has doesn’t stop all the way to the bottom of the caste system, a female dalit. If a man has nothing, he still has power over a woman.
The influence of the British and what they left behind is still present with repression, contempt, and a huge divide between rich and poor and men and women.
The youth of India could lead a non religious revolution all 600 million of them, to take away from the ruling and political classes of this conservative religious society.
To walk down the street in India, is to trip over kids that are everywhere, you see the understanding they have of their environment before gender and caste determines the future, all the facts and statistics mean nothing in that moment, and then the kids rule, if only they did.
Ben Graville