India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world.
India, country that occupies the greater part of South Asia. Its capital is New Delhi, built in the 20th century just south of the historic hub of Old Delhi to serve as India’s administrative centre. Its government is a constitutional republic that represents a highly diverse population consisting of thousands of ethnic groups and likely hundreds of languages. With roughly one-sixth of the world’s total population, India is the second most populous country, after China.
It is known from archaeological evidence that a highly sophisticated urbanized culture—the Indus civilization—dominated the northwestern part of the subcontinent from about 2600 to 2000 BCE. From that period on, India functioned as a virtually self-contained political and cultural arena, which gave rise to a distinctive tradition that was associated primarily with Hinduism, the roots of which can largely be traced to the Indus civilization. Other religions, notably Buddhism and Jainism, originated in India—though their presence there is now quite small—and throughout the centuries residents of the subcontinent developed a rich intellectual life in such fields as mathematics, astronomy, architecture, literature, music, and the fine arts.
Throughout its history, India was intermittently disturbed by incursions from beyond its northern mountain wall. Especially important was the coming of Islam, brought from the northwest by Arab, Turkish, Persian, and other raiders beginning early in the 8th century CE. Eventually, some of those raiders stayed; by the 13th century much of the subcontinent was under Muslim rule, and the number of Muslims steadily increased. Only after the arrival of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 and the subsequent establishment of European maritime supremacy in the region did India become exposed to major external influences arriving by sea, a process that culminated in the decline of the ruling Muslim elite and absorption of the subcontinent within the British Empire.
Direct administration by the British, which began in 1858, effected a political and economic unification of the subcontinent. When British rule came to an end in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned along religious lines into two separate countries—India, with a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan, with a majority of Muslims; the eastern portion of Pakistan later split off to form Bangladesh. Many British institutions stayed in place (such as the parliamentary system of government); English continued to be a widely used lingua franca; and India remained withinthe Commonwealth. Hindi became the official language (and a number of other local languages achieved official status), while a vibrant English-language intelligentsia thrived.
India remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Apart from its many religions and sects, India is home to innumerable castes and tribes, as well as to more than a dozen major and hundreds of minor linguistic groups from several language families unrelated to one another. Religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, still account for a significant proportion of the population; collectively, their numbers exceed the populations of all countries except China. Earnest attempts have been made to instill a spirit of nationhood in so varied a population, but tensions between neighbouring groups have remained and at times have resulted in outbreaks of violence. Yet social legislation has done much to alleviate the disabilities previously suffered by formerly “untouchable” castes, tribal populations, women, and other traditionally disadvantaged segments of society. At independence, India was blessed with several leaders of world stature, most notably Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who were able to galvanize the masses at home and bring prestige to India abroad. The country has played an increasing role in global affairs.
Contemporary India’s increasing physical prosperity and cultural dynamism—despite continued domestic challenges and economic inequality—are seen in its well-developed infrastructure and a highly diversified industrial base, in its pool of scientific and engineering personnel (one of the largest in the world), in the pace of its agricultural expansion, and in its rich and vibrant cultural exports of music, literature, and cinema. Though the country’s population remains largely rural, India has three of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in the world— Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta), and Delhi. Three other Indian cities— Bengaluru (Bangalore), Chennai (Madras), and Hyderabad—are among the world’s fastest- growing high-technology centres, and most of the world’s major information technology and software companies now have offices in India.
Temperatures in India generally are the warmest in May or June, just prior to the cooling downpours of the southwest monsoon. A secondary maximum often occurs in September or October when precipitation wanes. The temperature range tends to be significantly less along the coastal plains than in interior locations. The range also tends to increase with latitude. Near India’s southern extremity the seasonal range is no more than a few degrees; for example, at Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), in Kerala, there is an average fluctuation of just 4.3 °F (2.4 °C) around an annual mean temperature of 81. °F (27 °C). In the northwest, however, the range is much greater, as, for example, at Ambala, in Haryana, where the temperature fluctuates from 56 °F (13 °C) in January to 92 °F (33 °C) in June. Temperatures are also moderated wherever elevations are significant, and many Himalayan resort towns, called hill stations (a legacy of British colonial rule), afford welcome relief from India’s sometimes oppressive heat. Occasionally, heat waves, such as the one that spread over much of the subcontinent in mid-2015, can be highly deadly.
India is a diverse multiethnic country that is home to thousands of small ethnic and tribal groups. That complexity developed from a lengthy and involved process of migration and intermarriage. The great urban culture of the Indus civilization, a society of the Indus River valley that is thought to have been Dravidian-speaking, thrived from roughly 2500 to 1700 BCE. An early Aryan civilization—dominated by peoples with linguistic affinities to peoples in Iran and Europe—came to occupy northwestern and then north-central India over the period from roughly 2000 to 1500 BCE and subsequently spread southwestward and eastward at the expense of other indigenous groups. Despite the emergence of caste restrictions, that process was attended by intermarriage between groups that probably has continued to the present day, despite considerable opposition from peoples whose own distinctive civilizations had also evolved in early historical times. Among the documented invasions that added significantly to the Indian ethnic mix are those of Persians, Scythians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, and Afghans. The last and politically most successful of the great invasions—namely, that from Europe—vastly altered Indian culture but had relatively little impact on India’s ethnic composition.
India has one of the largest, most highly diversified economies in the world, but, because of its enormous population, it is—in terms of income and gross national product (GNP) per capita— one of the poorest countries on Earth. Since independence, India has promoted a mixed economic system in which the government, constitutionally defined as “socialist,” plays a major role as central planner, regulator, investor, manager, and producer. Starting in 1951, the government based its economic planning on a series of five-year plans influenced by the Soviet model. Initially, the attempt was to boost the domestic savings rate, which more than doubled in the half century following the First Five-Year Plan (1951–55). With the Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61), the focus began to shift to import-substituting industrialization, with an emphasis on capital goods. A broad and diversified industrial base developed. However, with the collapse of the Soviet system in the early 1990s, India adopted a series of free-market reforms that fueled the growth of its middle class, and its highly educated and well-trained workforce made India one of the global centres of the high-technology boom that began in the late 20th century and produced significant annual growth rates. The agricultural sector remains the country’s main employer (about half of the workforce), though, with about one-fifth of the gross domestic product (GDP), it is no longer the largest contributor to GDP. Manufacturing remains another solid component of GDP. However, the major growth has been in trade, finance, and other services, which, collectively, are by far the largest component of GDP.
Many of the government’s decisions are highly political, especially its attempts to invest equitably among the various states of the union. Despite the government’s pervasive economic role, large corporate undertakings dominate many spheres of modern economic activity, while tens of millions of generally small agricultural holdings and petty commercial, service, and craft enterprises account for the great bulk of employment. The range of technology runs the gamut from the most traditional to the most sophisticated.
There are few things that India cannot produce, though much of what it does manufacture would not be economically competitive without the protection offered by tariffs on imported goods, which have remained high despite liberalization. In absolute terms and in relation to GDP, foreigntrade traditionally has been low. Despite continued government regulation (which has remained strong in many sectors), trade expanded greatly beginning in the 1990s.
Probably no more than one-fifth of India’s vast labour force is employed in the so-called “organized” sector of the economy (e.g., mining, plantation agriculture, factory industry, utilities, and modern transportation, commercial, and service enterprises), but that small fraction generates a disproportionate share of GDP, supports most of the middle- and upper-class population, and generates most of the economic growth. It is the organized sector to which most government regulatory activity applies and in which trade unions, chambers of commerce, professional associations, and other institutions of modern capitalist economies play a significant role. Apart from rank-and-file labourers, the organized sector engages most of India’s professionals and virtually all of its vast pool of scientists and technicians. , in many areas, hard rock formations make it difficult to sink wells and severely curtail access to the groundwater that is present.
For such a predominantly agricultural country as India, resources of cultivable soil and water are of crucial importance. Although India does possess extensive areas of fertile alluvial soils, especially on the Indo-Gangetic Plain, and other substantial areas of relatively productive soils, such as the black (regur) soils of the Deccan lava plateau, the red-to-yellow lateritic soils that predominate over most of the remainder of the country are low in fertility. Overall, the per capita availability of cultivable area is low, and less than half of the cultivable land is of high quality. Moreover, many areas have lost much of their fertility because of erosion, alkalinization (caused by excessive irrigation without proper drainage), the subsurface formation of impenetrable hardpans, and protracted cultivation without restoring depleted plant nutrients.
Most Indian farms grow little besides food crops, especially cereal grains, and these account for more than three-fifths of the area under cultivation. Foremost among the grains, in terms of both area sown and total yield, is rice, the crop of choice in almost all areas with more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) of average annual precipitation, as well as in some irrigated areas. Wheat ranks second in both area sown and total yield and, because of the use of HYVs, leads all grains in yield per acre. Wheat is grown mainly on the fertile soils of northern and northwestern India in areas with 15 to 40 inches (380 to 1,000 mm) of average annual precipitation, often with supplementary irrigation. Unlike rice, which is mainly grown during the kharif (summer) season, wheat is primarily a rabi (cool-season) crop. Other important cereals, in descending order of sown acreage, are sorghum (called jowar in India), pearl millet (bajra), corn (maize), and finger millet (ragi). All these typically are grown on relatively infertile soils unsuitable for rice or wheat, while corn cultivation is also favoured in hilly and mountainous regions. After cereals, pulses are the most important category of food crop. These ubiquitous leguminous crops—of which the chickpea (gram) is the most important—are the main source of protein for most Indians, for whom the consumption of animal products is an expensive luxury or is proscribed on religious grounds.
Currency: Indian rupee Trending
Capital: New Delhi
Dialing code: +91
President: Droupadi Murmu
Population: 1.38 billion (2020) World Bank
Gross domestic product: 2.623 trillion USD (2020) World Bank
Official languages: Hindi, English