Environment

How will climate change affect India? With its large population, long coastlines, and location near the equator, India is particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of global warming. Rising sea levels will threaten the country’s many coastal cities, including the financial capital, Mumbai, and the...

Geopolitics

Who are India’s neighbors? India is by far the largest economy in South Asia, dominating neighboring Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal, not to mention tiny Bhutan and Sikkim. It also shares a disputed border with China, a nuclear power whose military and economic...

Politics

What is India’s political system? The 1949 constitution established India as a “sovereign democratic republic.” In 1976, under a state of emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that suspended many citizen rights and freedoms, a forty-second amendment to the original constitution added the...

India’s Civilizational Legacy

How has India’s geography shaped its history? The Indian subcontinent is a distinct geographic area, connected to yet largely separate from the vast continent of Eurasia. At once accessible and protected, the subcontinent’s geography and topography allowed a unique and multifaceted civilization to develop over...

Introduction

India enchants the world with its culture, excites with its potential, and intrigues with its traditions. It perplexes with its complexity, and it shocks with its violence, poverty, and corruption, yet it comforts much of the world—Western democracies in particular—with its large English-speaking population and...

Economy

What is the size of India’s economy and how fast is it growing? In terms of purchasing power parity, India’s $2.3 trillion economy ranked third in the world after the United States and China in 2016. Purchasing power parity means a comparison of economies in...

Society

How large is India’s population? In 2017, India’s population of 1.33 billion slipped past China’s 1.29 billion, making India the most populous country in the world. India’s population is expected to keep rising until it hits 1.7 billion people in 2050, after which it could...

A New Republic

What challenges did India face at independence? When India achieved independence from Britain on August 15, 1947, it faced a daunting situation. Its population of 345 million was largely poor and uneducated. Average life expectancy was just thirty-two years. Ninety-two percent of India’s people were...

The British Raj and the Road to Independence

What was the East India Company? On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter giving a group of English adventurers a fifteen-year monopoly over England’s trade with Asia. The first incarnation of the British East India Company was born. The British were...