Country name: | Republic of India |
Government type: | Federal parliamentary republic |
Capital: | New Delhi |
Administrative divisions: | 28 states and 9 union territories |
Independence: | 15 August 1947 (from the UK) |
Legal system: | Common law system based on the English model; separate personal law codes apply to Muslims, Christians, and Hindus; judicial review of legislative acts |
Total area: | Land 1,811,569 sq km, water 93,000 sq km, coastline 54,716 km, land boundaries 2,958 km |
Natural resources: | Petroleum, tin, natural gas, nickel, timber, bauxite, copper, fertile soils, coal, gold, silver |
Land use: | Agricultural land 31.2%, forest 51.7%, other 17.1% (2011 est.) |
Population: | 1,296,834,042 (July 2018 est.) |
Ethnic groups: | ndo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000) |
Languages: | Hindi 43.6%, Bengali 8%, Marathi 6.9%, Telugu 6.7%, Tamil 5.7%, Gujarati 4.6%, Urdu 4.2%, Kannada 3.6%, Odia 3.1%, Malayalam 2.9%, Punjabi 2.7%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.1%, other 5.6% (2011 est.) |
Religions: | Hindu 79.8%, Muslim 14.2%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.7%, other and unspecified 2% (2011 est.) |
Age structure: | Median age 28.1 years, life expectancy 69.1 years, total fertility rate 2.4 children born/woman (2018 est.) |
Urbanization: | Urban population: 34.5% of total population (2019) |
Literacy: |
Total population: 71.2%, male: 81.3%, female: 60.6% (2015 est.)
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Unemployment: | Unemployment youth ages (15-24): 10.1% |
India's diverse economy encompasses traditional village farming, modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide range of modern industries, and a multitude of services. Slightly less than half of the workforce is in agriculture, but services are the major source of economic growth, accounting for nearly two-thirds of India's output but employing less than one-third of its labor force. India has capitalized on its large educated English-speaking population to become a major exporter of information technology services, business outsourcing services, and software workers. Nevertheless, per capita income remains below the world average. India is developing into an open-market economy, yet traces of its past autarkic policies remain. Economic liberalization measures, including industrial deregulation, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and reduced controls on foreign trade and investment, began in the early 1990s and served to accelerate the country's growth, which averaged nearly 7% per year from 1997 to 2017.
India has a young population and corresponding low dependency ratio, healthy savings and investment rates, and is increasing integration into the global economy. However, long-term challenges remain significant, including: India's discrimination against women and girls, an inefficient power generation and distribution system, ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights, decades-long civil litigation dockets, inadequate transport and agricultural infrastructure, limited non-agricultural employment opportunities, high spending and poorly targeted subsidies, inadequate availability of quality basic and higher education, and accommodating rural-to-urban migration.
India's economic growth slowed in 2011 because of a decline in investment caused by high interest rates, rising inflation, and investor pessimism about the government's commitment to further economic reforms and about slow world growth. Investors’ perceptions of India improved in early 2014, due to a reduction of the current account deficit and expectations of post-election economic reform, resulting in a surge of inbound capital flows and stabilization of the rupee. Growth rebounded in 2014 through 2016. Despite a high growth rate compared to the rest of the world, India’s government-owned banks faced mounting bad debt, resulting in low credit growth. Rising macroeconomic imbalances in India and improving economic conditions in Western countries led investors to shift capital away from India, prompting a sharp depreciation of the rupee through 2016.
The economy slowed again in 2017, due to shocks of "demonetizaton" in 2016 and introduction of GST in 2017. Since the election, the government has passed an important goods and services tax bill and raised foreign direct investment caps in some sectors, but most economic reforms have focused on administrative and governance changes, largely because the ruling party remains a minority in India’s upper house of Parliament, which must approve most bills.