India Information

India is a federal republic of twenty-eight states and seven union territories. All states, the union territory of Puducherry, and the National Capital Territory of Delhi have elected governments. The other five union territories have centrally appointed administrators and hence are under direct rule of the President. In 1956, under the States Reorganization Act, states were formed on linguistic basis. Since then this structure has remained largely unchanged. Each state or union territory is divided into basic units of government and administration called districts. There are nearly 600 districts in India. The districts in turn are further divided into tehsils and eventually into villages.


Administrative divisions of India, including 28 states and 7 union territories.

States:

Andhra Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh
Assam
Bihar
Chhattisgarh
Goa
Gujarat
Haryana
Himachal Pradesh
Jammu and Kashmir
Jharkhand
Karnataka
Kerala
Madhya Pradesh
Maharashtra
Manipur
Meghalaya
Mizoram
Nagaland
Orissa
Punjab
Rajasthan
Sikkim
Tamil Nadu
Tripura
Uttar Pradesh
Uttarakhand
West Bengal

Union Territories:

Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Chandigarh
Dadra and Nagar Haveli
Daman and Diu
Lakshadweep
National Capital Territory of Delhi
Puducherry

Parliamentary democracy
- President: Pratibha Patil
- Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh

The name India is derived from Indus, which is derived from the Old Persian word Hindu, from Sanskrit Sindhu, the historic local appellation for the Indus River.
The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, the people of the Indus.
The Constitution of India and common usage in various Indian languages also recognise Bharat as an official name of equal status.Hindustan , which is the Persian word for “Land of the Hindus” and historically referred to northern India, is also occasionally used as a synonym for all of India.

India (Hindi: भारत Bhārat; see also other names), officially the Republic of India (Hindi: भारत गणराज्य Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a sovereign nation in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by geographical area, the second most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east, India has a coastline of 7,517 kilometers. It borders Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Indonesia.

Home to the Indus Valley civilization and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated here, while Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam arrived in the first millennium CE and shaped the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by the British East India Company from the early eighteenth century and colonised by the United Kingdom from the mid-nineteenth century, India became a modern nation-state in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by widespread nonviolent resistance.

India is the world's twelfth largest economy at market exchange rates and the third largest economy in purchasing power. Economic reforms have transformed it into the second fastest growing large economy, however, it still suffers from high levels of poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and environmental degradation. A pluralistic, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic society, India is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.

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