India country profile

Fact Sheet: The United States and India Announce Historic Trade Deal

India has a three-tier unitary independent judiciary comprising the supreme court, headed by the Chief Justice of India, 25 high courts, and a large number of trial courts. In the Indian parliamentary system, the executive is subordinate to the legislature; the prime minister and their council are directly responsible to the lower house of the parliament. The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth.

Mr Modi is only the second Indian leader to win a third consecutive term after the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. As a rising economic powerhouse and nuclear-armed state, India has emerged as an important regional power. The new mountains—together with vast amounts of sediment eroded from them—were so heavy that the Indian-Australian Plate just south of the range was forced downward, creating a zone of crustal subsidence. Those slices were thrown back onto the northern edge of the Indian landmass and came to form much of the Himalayan mountain system. It is bounded to the northwest by Pakistan, to the north by Nepal, China, and Bhutan; and to the east by Myanmar (Burma).

Culture

Dynamic, dedicated and determined, Narendra Modi arrives as a ray of hope in the lives of a billion Indians. It has achieved all-round socio-economic progress since Independence. India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage. The system of government in states closely resembles that of the Union. Traditional sports include kabaddi, kho kho, and gilli-danda, which are played throughout India. The number of Indian Grandmasters has increased recently.

Dwarkadhish Temple

Some 431 million Indians have left poverty since 1985; India’s middle classes are projected to number around 580 million by 2030. India’s foreign exchange remittances of US$100 billion in 2022, highest in the world, were contributed to its economy by 32 million Indians working in foreign countries. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then, it has moved increasingly towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows. The vast majority of Indians fall into the global low-income group based on average daily income. With an average annual GDP growth rate of 5.8% over the past two decades, and reaching 6.1% during 2011–2012, India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

After losing the majority in the 2024 general election, the BJP formed a coalition government with its NDA partners. Congress emerged as the largest single party and formed a coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The BJP, now a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), formed a coalition government led by Vajpayee, who became the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a five-year term. United Front coalition governments followed, which relied on external political support, H. In 1996, the BJP briefly formed a government after winning the general election. V. Narasimha Rao, formed a minority government which served a full five-year term.

In 2006, the share of external trade in India’s GDP stood at 24%, up from 6% in Bet365 India 1985. The 522-million-worker Indian labour force is the world’s second largest, as of 2017update. Since the end of the Cold War, India has increased its economic, strategic, and military cooperation with the United States and the European Union.

Dance

  • That means a strong federal government with weak state governments.
  • The island country of Sri Lanka is situated some 40 miles (65 km) off the southeast coast of India.
  • The Old Persian name was used for the eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire.
  • The twin hills of Khandagiri and Udaigiri are famous for their rock-cut caves, constructed by Jain monks during the 1st and 2nd century BC.
  • As a rising economic powerhouse and nuclear-armed state, India has emerged as an important regional power.
  • Similarly, the Republic of India does not recognise the Pakistani and Chinese parts of Kashmir.

Native speakers of Hindi represented about 41% of the Indian population in the 2001 Indian census. Around 5% of the people speak a Tibeto-Burman language. About 69% of Indians speak an Indo-Arayan language, and about 26% speak a Dravidian language. The largest cities in India are Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad. In 2023, India passed China to become the world’s most populous country. Despite its economic growth, India continues to suffer from poverty.

The Indian Army is becoming more modern by buying and making new weapons. Its Commander-in-Chief is the President of India, but the Ministry of Defence manages the military. All the states (and the territories of Delhi and Puducherry) elect their local government themselves. States and union territories differ in the way they are represented. In total, there are twenty-eight states and eight union territories.

India has been said to be a “quasi-federal” form of government. This forced the national parties to create coalition governments. It has six national parties, for example the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).