| Government | Country Name:
Conventional long form: Republic of India.
Conventional short form: India.
Data Code: IN
Government Type:Federal Republic.
National Capital:New Delhi.
Administrative Divisions:
28 states and 7 union territories: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Pondicherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh are the new states formed in 2000.
Independence:
15 August 1947 (from UK)
National Holiday:
Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic, 26 January (1950).
Constitution: 26 January 1950.
Legal System:
Based on English common law, limited judicial review of legislative acts, accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations.
Suffrage:
18 year of age; universal.
Executive Branch:
Chief of state: President Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam; Vice President: Bhairon Singh Shekawat
Head of the Government:
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (since 19 March 1998).
Cabinet:
Council of Ministers appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.
Elections:
The President is elected by an electoral college consisting of elected members of both houses of parliament and the legislatures of the states for a five-years term. The Vice-President is elected by both houses of parliament. The Prime Minister is elected by parliamentary members of the majority party following legislative elections.
Legislative Branch:
Bicameral Parliament or Sansad consists of the Council of States or Rajya Sabha (a body consisting of not more than 250 members, up to 12 of which are appointed by the president, the remainder are chosen by the elected members of the state and territorial assemblies and the members serve a six-year terms) and the People's Assembly or Lok Sabha (545 seats: 543 elected by popular vote, 2 appointed members serve five-years terms)
Elections:
People's Assembly-last held 16 February through 7 March 1998.
Judicial Branch:
Supreme Court judges are appointed by the president and remain in office until they reach the age of 65.
Flag:
Three equal horizontal bands of saffron (top), white and green with a blue chakra (24-spoked wheel) centered in the white band.
| | People | Population: 984,003,683 (July 1998 est.).
Age structure:
| 0-14 years | : | 34% (male 174, 578,403; female 164,755,937), | | 15-65 years | : | 61% (male 310,995,355; female 288,344,336), | | 65 years and over | : | 5% (male 23,051,278; female 22,278,374) (July 1998 est.). |
Population growth rate: 1.71% (1998 est.).
Birth rate: 25.91 births / 1,000 population "(1998 est.)
Death rate: 8.69 deaths / 1,000 population (1998 est.)
Net migration rate:0.08 migrants / 1,000 population (1998 est.)
Sex ratio:
| At birth | : | 1.05 male(s) female | | Under 15 years | : | 1.06 male(s) female | | 15-64 years | : | 1.08 male(s) female | | 65 years and over | : | 1.04 male(s) female (1998 est.) |
Infant mortality rate: 63,14 deaths / 1,000 live births (1998 est.).
Life expectancy at birth: Total population: 62.9 years.
Male: 62.11 years
Female: 63.73 years (1998 est.)
Totally fertility rate: 3.24 children born/woman (1998 est.)
Nationality:
Noun: Indian(s)
Adjective: Indian.
Ethnic Groups:
| Indo-Aryan | : | 72% | | Dravidian | : | 25% | | Mongoloid and other | : | 3% |
Religions:
| Hindu | : | 80% | | Muslim | : | 14% | | Christian | : | 2.4% | | Sikh | : | 2% | | Buddhist | : | 0.7 | | Jains | : | 0.5% | | Others | : | 0.4% |
Languages:
English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication, Hindi the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people, Bengali (official) Telugu (official), Marathi (official), Tamil (official), Urdu (official), Gujarati (Official), Malayalam (official) Kannada (official), Oriya (official), Punjabi (official), Assamese (official), Kashmiri (official), Sindhi (Official), Sanskrit (official), Hindustani a popular variant of Hindi / Urdu, is spoken widely throughout northern India.
Note: 24 languages are each spoken by a million or more persons, numerous other languages and dialects also do exist in the Tribal belts.
Literacy:
Definition: age 15 and over can read and write
| Total population | : | 52% | | Male | : | 65.5% | | Female | : | 37% (1995 est.) |
| | Economy |
Economy-overview:
India’s economy encompasses traditional village farming, modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries, and a multitude of support services. 67% of India’s labor force, nearly 400 million work in agriculture. Agriculture contributes 30% of the country’s GDP. Production, trade, and investment reforms since 1991 have provided new opportunities for Indian businesspersons and an estimated 300 million middle class consumers. New Delhi has avoided debt rescheduling, attracted foreign investments, and revived confidence in India’s economic prospects since 1991. Many of the country’s fundamentals including savings rates (26% of GDP) and reserve (now about $24 billion)-are healthy, Inflation eased to 7% in 1997, and interest rates dropped to between 10% and 13%. Even so, the Indian Government needs to restore the early momentum of reforms, especially by continuing reductions in the extensive remaining government regulations. Moreover, economy policy changes have not yet significantly increased jobs or reduced the risk that international financial strain will bring within the next few years. Nearly 40% of the Indian Population remains too poor to afford a nutrient diet. India exports, and foreign institutional investment were affected by the East Asian crisis in late 1997 and early 1998, but capital account controls, a low ratio of short-term debt to reserves, and enhanced supervision of the financial sector helped insulate it from near term balance-of-payments problems. Export growth, has been slipping in 1996-97, averaging only about 4% to 5%-a large drop from the more than 20% increases it was experiencing over the prior three years. Energy, telecommunications, and transportation shortages and the legacy of inefficient factories constrain industrial growth which expanded only 6.7% in 1997-down from more than 11% in 1996. Growth of agricultural sector is still fairly slow rebounding to only 5.7% in 1997 from a fall of 0.1% in 1996. Agricultural investment has slowed, while costly subsidies on fertilizer, food distribution, and rural electricity remains. Nevertheless, even if a series of weak coalition governments continue to rule in New Delhi for the next few years and are able to push reforms aggressively, parts of the economy that have already benefited from deregulation will continue to grow.
GDP:
| Purchasing power parity | : | $1.534 trillion (1997 est.). | | Real growth rate | : | 5% (1997 est.). | | Per capita Purchasing power parity | : | $1,600 (1997 est.) | Composition by sector:
| Agriculture | : | 30%, | | Industry | : | 28%, | | Services | : | 42% (1996 est.). |
Inflation rate-consumer price index: 7% (1997 est.).
Labour force:
Total: 390 million 91997 est.).
By occupation: agriculture 67%, services 18%, industry 15% (1995 est.).
Budget:
| Revenues | : | $39 billion. | | Expenditure | : | $61 billion, including capital expenditures of $10 billion 9FY97/98 est.). |
Industries:
Textiles, chemicals, food processing, steel, transportation equipment, cement, mining petroleum machinery.
Industrial production growth rate: 6.7% (1997 est.).
-capacity: 83.288 million kW (1996).
Electricity-production: 398.28 billion kWh (1995).
Electricity - consumption per capita: 427 kWh (1995).
Agriculture - products:
Rice, wheat, oilseed, cotton, jute, tea, sugarcane, potatoes, cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats, poultry; fish catch of about 3 million metric tons ranks India among the world’s top 10 fishing nations.
Exports:
Total value: $33.9 billion (f.o.b., 1997).
Commodities: gems and jewelry, clothing, engineering goods, chemicals, leather manufactures, cotton yarn, and fabric; Partners: US, Hong Kong, UK, Germany.
Imports:
Total value: $39.7 billion (c.i.f., 1997).
Commodities: crude oil and petroleum products, machinery, gems, fertilizer, chemicals, partners: US, Belgium, Germany, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan.
Economic aid:
Recipient: ODA, $10237 billion (1993); US ODA bilateral commitments $171 million; US Ex-Im bilateral commitments $680 million; Western (non-US) countries, ODA bilateral commitments $2.48 billion; OPEC bilateral aid $200 million; World Bank (IBRD) multilateral commitments 42.8 billion; Asian Development Bank (ADB) multilateral commitments $670 million; International Finance Corporation (IFC) multilateral commitments $200 million; other multilateral commitments $554 million (1995-96).
Currency:
1 Indian rupee (Re) = 100 paise.
Exchange rates:
Indian rupees (Rs) per US$1-39.358 (January 1998), 36.313 (1997), 35.433(1996), 32.427 (1995), 31.374 (1994), 30.493 (1993)
Fiscal year: 1 April-31 March
| | Communications | Telephones: 12 million (1996).
Telephone System:
Probably the least adequate telephone system of any of the developing countries; three of every four villages have no telephone facility; only 5% of India’s villages have long-distance service. Poor telephone service significantly impede commercial and industrial growth and penalises India in the global markets. Slow improvement are taking place with the recent admission of private investors, but demand for communication services are also growing rapidly.
Switchboard system:
Within the last 10 years a substantial amount of digital switch gear has been introduced for local service; long-distance traffic is carried mostly by open wire, coaxial cable, and low from of fibre-optic cable and a domestic satellite system with over 100 earth stations.
International:
Satellite earth stations-8 Intelsat Indian Ocean) and 1 Inmarsat (Indian Ocean Region); submarine cables to Malaysia and UAE.
Radio Broadcast Station:
| Am Stations | : | 96 | | FM stations | : | 96 | | Short-wave stations | : | 96 | Radios: 70 million (1992 est.).
Television Broadcast Stations: 274 (government controlled).
Televisions: 33 million (1992 est.).
| | Transportation | Railways:
| Total | : | 62,660 km (12,296 km electrified; 12,617 km double track). | | Broad gauge | : | 39,612 km 1.676-m gauge. | | Narrow gauge | : | 19,210 km 1.000-m gauge; 3,838 km 0.762-m and 0.610-m gauge 91995 est.). |
Highways:
| Total | : | 2.06 million km. | | Paved | : | 1,034,120 km. | | Unpaved | : | 1,025,880 km (1996 est.). |
Waterways:
16,180 km; 3,631 km; petroleum products 2,687 km; natural gas 1,700 km (1995).
Ports & Harbors:
Calcutta, Chennai (Madras), Cochin, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kandla, Mumbai (Bombay), Vishakhapatnam.
Merchant marine:
Total: 299 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 6,605,619 GRT/10,988,439 DWT.
Ships by type:
Bulk 126, cargo 58, chemical tanker 9, combination bulk 1, combination ore/oil 3, container 11, liquefied gas tanker 9, oil tanker 75, passenger-cargo 5, roll-on / roll-off cargo 1, short sea passenger 1 (1997 est.).
Airports:
343 (1997 est.).
Airports-with paved runways:
Total: 237.
Over 3,047 meter’s (Runway Length): 47.
1,524 to 2,437 meter’s (Runway Length): 87.
914 to 1,523 meter’s (Runway Length): 72.
Under 914 meter’s: 19 (1997 est.).
Airports-with unpaved runways:
Total: 106
2.438 to 3,047 meter’s (Runway Length): 2.
1,524 to 2,437 meter’s (Runway Length): 6.
914 to 1,523 meter’s (Runway Length): 47.
Under 914 meter’s: 51 (1997 est.).
Heliports:
16 (1997 est.).
| | Military | | Military Branches:
The Indian armed forces consists of the Army, Navy, Air Force and also various security and paramilitary forces (which includes the Border Security Force, Assam Rifles and the Coast Guard).
Military Manpower:
Military age: 17 years of age.
Availability: Males age: 15-49: 263,765,005 (1998 est.).
Fit for military service: Males: 154,925,081 (1998 est.).
Reaching military age annually: Males: 10,566,718 (1998 est.).
Military Expenditures:
Dollar figure: $ 8 billion (Financial Year 95 / 96).
Percentage of GDP: 2.7 % (Financial Year 95 / 96).
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