To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
In today’s world, we often find ourselves engrossed in the clutches of so-called “Globalization”. Whenever the topic of “culture” springs up in family discussions, my mother always delivers a harangue about how the cities are losing their grip on the core culture of our country. Unfortunately but indeed, this view-point is true.
The ‘actual’ society of a country resides in its small villages and towns in the countryside. Being a boy born and brought up in two Indian megapolises, I can corroborate this quite well. Indian women residing in the cities, generally tend to demur when they are asked to wear the ‘saree’ (our national dress for women) to their workplaces. People in Mumbai or New Delhi have an increasing predilection for Italian, Chinese, Mexican and Turkish cuisines inspite of having their own variegated cuisine, which ironically is desired by people all over the world.
Nowadays, there is an increasing tendency of the people residing in the cities, to eschew their respective mother language and converse only in English, just to elicit awe and respect from their peers and acquaintances. But is this all what actually represents the most important characteristics of our society??? Absolutely not. As an Indian with most of my relatives living in a small town in the countryside, I know that people living in the towns and villages are still not very well rehearsed in the daily usage of English. My cousin sister working in a small private firm in her town, still commutes to work daily wearing the traditional dress, and with her do the plethora of women in the smaller cities and towns.
My friends coming from smaller cities, have revealed that people in their native places have never even heard of any other cuisine existing apart from their own!!!
But here comes the point of how one defines the so-called “characteristics” of a society. If a person sitting comfortably in his drawing-room in New York wants to find out about the current fashion trends in India or the most-viewed Hollywood movie in India, then he/she definitely has to go through the statistics of the major Indian cities’ customers’ preferences. If a multi-national company desires to open a branch office in Mumbai, it will of course go through the demographics of Mumbai and not some small village of 100 inhabitants up in the hills of the north-east.
But inspite of all the contradicting views, I would say that if you want to understand the most important aspects and characteristics of my country, you would have to hop to the countryside and visit the people there to appreciate what it means to be a part of my society.
