Cultural Issues in India

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“Dawley” which is when woman get married, she have to brings a dowry for the husband. Although it is legally prohibited, the system is still alive. There are the cases that in order to squeeze a dowey from a bride, husband abuse his bride or burn her with a fire if the dowry is not enough. Some of the very basic human rights  of woman are violated almost everyday in India.

For the protection of girl child, Indian government recently has started a program called “Ladli” in which a certain amount of money is stated at the time of birth and it provide the economic support for the girl till the age of eighteen. There is also another program called  “Jaccha Baccha scheme” in which government look after the birth of the girl child and all the cost in her growth. Furthermore, due to the continuation of cruel crimes and woman abuse, there has been several demo between police and protesters seeking for sever punishment of sexual crimes in India, and  finally the government has decided a revision of the criminal Law with the death penalty for the highest sentence for sexual crime in 2013. In spite of the effort of the government, discrimination against women still exist and Indian women are fighting hard in order to change the sad reality of India today.

Another issue in Indian culture is overpopulation. According to the Indian census, the population of India is 1,309.35 million which is right behind the population of China 1,382.71 million. It is estimated to exceed china and be the world’s number one country with the most population by 2025, and it is estimated to continue growing to reach 1.7 billion in 2050. The reason causing this overpopulation is the balance between birth rate and mortality rate. In india, birth rate is much higher than the death rate. While the development of technology and advance in medical science has been extending country’s life-span, the fertility rate kept increasing.  Even though the birth rate is decreasing due to the government’s population policies, it is still relatively higher than other countries. One thing keeping the high birth late is the early marriage and universal marriage system in Indian culture. Even the marriage is legally not approved until the age of 18, the practice of early marriage still remaining in the country and that extend the childbearing age. Another reason for the increased population is poverty. Among people in poor stratum, there is the general idea that the more members in the family, the more income to the family. In addition, the old cultural norm to prefer have a son gives pressure for woman to continue giving birth until a boy child is born. Furthermore, the illegal migration from the countries like Bangladesh and Nepal contributing the increased population density. This overpopulation affecting the country in various ways such as the high unemployment, infrastructure, food shortage and inequality of resources distribution.

The government has been implementing numbers of countermeasures in order to control population such as provide more education, increase the awareness on contraception, introducing the family planning methods, empowerment and increasing the status of women, and developing more health care for poor. Experts insist that by increasing public awareness and implementation of population control policy surely lead to the prevention of further population increase and more growth of the