India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second most populous country, and the most populous liberal
democracy.India has a coastline of over seven thousand kilometres which is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the
east. India borders Afghanistan and Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, The Tibet Autonomous Region and Bhutan to the north-east; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. India is in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean nations of Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia and Thailand.
The first urban civilization on the Indian subcontinent arose around 3300 BCE in the Indus river
valley. India subsequently became a hub of ancient trade routes, the seat of vast empires, and a center of cultural innovation and
synthesis, whose diverse achievements included the decimal number
system, the Buddhist cave monuments at Ajanta, and the Taj Mahal. Four of the world's major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India, while Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism arrived in the first millennium CE and played an influential role in the formation of the variegated culture of India. In addition, through the transmission of Buddhism and Hinduism, India notably influenced the cultures of South
Asia, South-east Asia, and East Asia. India emerged as a modern democratic nation-state in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was characterized by the first large-scale use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience as a means of social protest. It became a republic in 1950, with the completion of a constitution that guaranteed "liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith, and worship." Modern India is a large and complex country that defies easy characterization. On the one hand, it is now the fourth largest economy (PPP) in the world and the second fastest growing
economy, having made rapid economic progress in the last ten years, especially in the field of information technology. It has the second largest agricultural output of any country in the world; it is a declared nuclear deterrent
state, with an active space program; and it is sometimes spoken of as an emerging
superpower. On the other hand, despite these gains, India battles endemic poverty and uneven development. It ranks 122nd in per capita income among the nations of the world, with four-fifths of its population living on less than $2 a day. India also ranks 127th in the 2005 UN human development index and, according to the FAO, has the largest number of undernourished people of any country in the
world, which, at 212 million, is a full one-fifth of the population.
However, India's overall prognosis is now much improved: with its high rates of growth, its standard of living is expected to rise sharply in the 21st century.
