Test: Equality In Indian Democracy - 1

India is a federal parliamentary Secular democratic republic in which the President of India is the head of state and the Prime Minister of India is the head of government. The Indian constitution provides for an independent judiciary, which is headed by the Supreme Court.

Universal Adult Franchise means that the right to vote should be given to all adult citizens without the discrimination of caste, class, colour, religion or gender. It is based on equality, which is a basic principle of democracy.

The caste system is an ancient, age-old belief system that plagues India till today. It is a system that has divides Hindus into rigid, hierarchical occupational groups called “varna“. It considers some groups “pure” and some “impure”. This Varna system includes four Varnas- Bhramin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, in descending order of purity. 

Dalit, meaning "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindi, is a term mostly used for the castes in India that have been subjected to untouchability. 

The author of Joothan is the famous dalit writer Om Prakash Valmiki who describes about his life as a dalit.

Omprakash Valmiki is one of the most famous Dalit litterateurs in Hindi and he portrayed the life of Dalits with an authentically Dalit voice. He was born in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh in 1950. He worked with Government Ordnance Factory Dehradun.

In a secular country, unequal treatment on the basis of religion is not acceptable by the constitution but many people still practise it and in the process hurt other people’s dignity. This is what happened with the Ansaris. The Ansaris felt that their dignity was hurt because they were being treated unequally on the basis of differences of religion as many people refused to lease their apartments just because they were Muslims. 

It is not a public place. If you want to go in parliament you should be a VIP or staff of parliament.

The Midday meal scheme refers to the programme introduced in all government elementary schools to provide children with cooked lunch. Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to introduce this scheme.In 2001 the Supreme Court asked all state governments to begin this programme in their schools.

United States of America, the african-americans whose ancestors were the slaves who were brought over from Africa, continue to describe their lives today as largely unequal.

In late August 1619, “20 and odd” captive Africans first touched the soil at Point Comfort (now Fort Monroe National Monument), part of England’s new colony in Virginia. These men and women had been stolen from their homes in Africa, forced to board a ship, and sailed for months into the unknown.

The first Africans in an English colony, their arrival is considered by many historians to be the beginning of a 400-year story filled with tragedy, endurance, survival, and a legacy of resilience, inequality, and oppression.