Introduction It is well-known that India is a quite diverse country.

Indians cultural issues differ from place to place within the country. Some of the factors that have influenced this diversity are explained by history itself. For instance the Indian colonization by the United Kingdom has had a huge cultural impact on Indian people, given that language is the cultural vehicle of all civilizations, so a language mutation will necessarily affect peoples culture. On the other hand India is home to four mayor religions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. This makes the country one of the most religious nations in the world, which is often conflicting given that different religions imply different perspectives of the world as well as traditions and customs. Finally, contemporary Indian society is characterized by its rapid economic growth and the conflict between progress and environment which together with the unregulated market has been responsible for mayor disasters, such as the Bhopal gas leak in 1984 that is still causing protests and campaigns against this type of corporations. For this reason, on this report, we will be analyzing the main aspects of Indian society, among which we can include: languages, religions and the environmental problems derived from progress. One final thing that must be taken into account is the

THE POWER OF MONEY: Contamination and corporate irresponsibility One of the mayor problems India has to face, has to do with contamination derived from industrial purposes. For instance, the main source of clean water is ground water which is currently being used intensively for irrigation and industrial purposes, while the geohydrochemical processes has caused its mineralization. There are many examples of corporate irresponsibility throughout Indias history; however the Bhopal disaster is, by far the most significant. The city of Bhopal is the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and is known as the city of the lakes along with one of the greenest areas of India. Unfortunately, the city became world famous for the Bhopal disaster in 1984 leading to the worst industrial disaster in the history of industrialization and the loss of thousands of lives after the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide manufacturing plant leaked a series of deadly gases including methyl isocyanate that has caused the death of over 8000 people for gas related diseases and has affected a population of over 500.000 people, that have been exposed to the toxic gas. Among the reasons for the leak, we can find the company not following the recommendations suggested by American engineers that visited the plant and Indian authorities. Together with this, the company did not take any security measures after the earlier leaks that affected the plant in more than three occasions in 1976, 1981 and 1982 respectively. Other contributing factors were filling tanks with toxic gases beyond recommended levels, failure of several safety systems due to the poor maintenance and safety systems being switched off to save money, including the refrigeration system which could have mitigated the disaster severity. Finally, the plant operators not speaking English did not help to prevent the disaster, since the manuals were all in English. As a conclusion we can point out that even though the companys owners were warned about this situation as early as 1969, they did not do anything about it in order to save money. For the same reason their employees worked in very poor conditions and were exposed to toxic gases along with the population of Bhopal, given that the industry was built in a densely populated area.

From the disaster onwards Bhopal has been center of protests and campaigns against Union Carbide India Limited. Warren Anderson, its owner and responsible for the tragedy was charged with manslaughter by Indian authorities, however he remains unpunished since the United States has declined to extradite him citing a lack of evidence.

MERGING TWO LANGUAGES: English versus Hindi Nowadays the official language in India is Hindi, while English is considered as the language for official work. However, neither Hindi nor English is known as the national language. Every state in India is able to legislate their own official languages. This situation has led the country to a vast division when it comes to Indian peoples mother tongue, forms of communication and how they learn both English and Hindi languages. In the one hand, this may be seen as an advantage, as many Indian people are able to speak two different languages, which is in fact very useful; on the other hand, this has ensued in several problems covering linguistics, society and even national identity. In the north part of the country, most people speak Hindi. For instance, a 90% of the rural population speaks only Hindi and is not able to understand English. It is important to point out the fact that Hindi language derived from Sanskrit and is written from left to right using a script known as Devangari; these particular characteristics show us how much of a difference is there between Hindi and English. Despite the importance given to English in most academic contexts, Hindi continues to be the major language in India. Hindi is a phonetic language, meaning that the pronunciation of most new words can be easily predicted once read; this characteristic needs to be put in contrast with English pronunciation, which is not always as much predictable as Hindis. This is one of the main reasons for the characteristic Indian English accent and also for the difficulties Indian people have to face when learning English after having learned Hindi and vice versa. On the contrary, English is dominant in the south part of the country. Schools, colleges and offices prefer English considering that it is todays universal language. Moreover, English plays an important role in the labor world: a good candidate for a job position being rejected because he/she doesnt speak English is one of many examples. Another interesting phenomenon is the

aversion to English from a significant part of Indian population, as a result of the British Rule during the years 1858-1947. Finally, the most shocking characteristic is the fact that Indian people are not able to understand each other in so many cases, considering these languages differences. Regarding the part of the population who is bilingual, most of them speak a mixture between English and Hindi and tend to confuse grammatical structures such as the uses of grammatical tenses, in addition to the pronunciation difficulties.

MACHISMO: Women in India In India, machismo is part of the culture, in other words, machismo is a normal practice and even women are discriminated before birth. It is not a difference between who has more money, job, or a difference among woman and man but a difference between a person and a person who does not exist. Women in India do not worth anything, even if they have a good job or if they earn more money than a man, they always will be considerate less, even less than an animal. Little girls are forced to get married to old men for money and these girls must live a life full of hard work. That said, these girls present higher risks for their health. Since very young, women have a responsibility as wives, but that is not all, they also have to be responsible as mothers. Although these situations are common in any social class, more affected women are those who are part of a low social stratum. The lack of sanitary, hygiene, food and education make impossible that they can cover their basic needs and guarantee their dignity that they deserve as humans and as a result of this, families sell or married their daughter for money. In Delhi, each 12 hours die a woman because of her husband. They sprinkle his wives with kerosene and then they set fire. After his act, man denounces it as an accident or suicide. The reason of this corresponds to money. If the husband is not satisfied with the money given by her wifes family, it is easier cause her dead and to search other woman with the aim of getting more money and to overcome his poverty. Women only have not this problem, but the disregard against them is absolutely a fact. Some examples of this are the following: when a woman gives birth a girl, her family has to pay a big amount of money to the husbands family because he is taken care of her now, and sometimes the wifes family run out of money because of this. Another example is when women are in a restaurant with a man, the menu is received by the man and the woman is not considered or if

there are a homeless asking for money, although the woman is there, the money is requested to the man. In this country is also practiced the selective abortion, whereby die 1500 fetuses per day, and this is the reason that by each 1000 men, there are 910 women, and this number continues decline. At the same time, in India, housework is not just a work for woman. It is not socially looked down upon that a man makes dinner or washes the dishes, therefore when a woman works as a builder is perfectly well considered.

Conclusion