What is India?

India divides into four broad physical regions: the Himalaya along the northern border, containing some of the world's highest peaks; the Indo-Gangetic plain, an immense alluvial belt that is among the most densely populated and intensively farmed places on earth; the Deccan plateau, older and drier, occupying most of the peninsula; and the coastal plains and Western and Eastern Ghats flanking it.

The Thar desert occupies the northwest; the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, sit in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra in the east.

The southwest monsoon is the country's organising fact. Arriving in Kerala around the start of June and advancing north over about six weeks, it delivers the large majority of annual rainfall in most of the country. Agriculture, reservoir levels, hydropower, food prices and rural incomes all move with it, which is why the India Meteorological Department's monsoon forecast is national news.

Rainfall varies more than almost anywhere: Mawsynram and Cherrapunji in Meghalaya are among the wettest inhabited places on earth, while parts of Rajasthan receive under 200mm a year.

India is among the most biodiverse countries in the world, with four of the world's biodiversity hotspots, over a hundred national parks, and the last wild population of Asiatic lions in Gujarat's Gir forest.

India became the world's most populous country in 2023, overtaking China. Roughly two-thirds of the population still lives in rural areas, though urbanisation is rapid and India contains several of the world's largest metropolitan areas — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad among them.

The demographic structure is unusually young: a median age around 28, with a large working-age population relative to dependants. This 'demographic dividend' is the central premise of most projections about the Indian economy, and it is time-limited — fertility has already fallen to around replacement level nationally, and well below it in the southern states.

Linguistically India is exceptionally diverse. The Constitution's Eighth Schedule recognises 22 languages; the Census records over 120 languages with more than ten thousand speakers and hundreds of mother tongues. Hindi and English are the Union's official languages, but states designate their own, and a citizen may deal with the Union government in either official language.

Religiously, around four-fifths of the population is Hindu, with the world's third-largest Muslim population, plus Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and other communities. The Constitution establishes a secular state — the Supreme Court has held secularism to be part of its basic structure — and guarantees freedom of religion as a fundamental right.

Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, listed in Presidential orders, together make up roughly a quarter of the population and have constitutionally mandated reservations in legislatures, public employment and education.

India is a parliamentary democracy on the Westminster pattern, adapted. The President is head of state, elected indirectly by an electoral college of MPs and state legislators, and acts on the advice of the Council of Ministers. Real executive power rests with the Prime Minister and Cabinet, who must command the confidence of the Lok Sabha.

Parliament has two houses: the Lok Sabha (House of the People), directly elected for five-year terms from single-member constituencies; and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States), whose members are elected by state legislatures for staggered six-year terms. Money bills can originate only in the Lok Sabha.

Each state has a Governor appointed by the President, a Chief Minister and council of ministers drawn from the state legislature, and its own legislative assembly. Union territories are administered by the Union, though Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu & Kashmir have legislatures with limited powers.

Elections are run by the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body with substantial independence, using electronic voting machines. A general election in India is the largest administrative exercise conducted anywhere on earth, with an electorate approaching a billion.

Below the states, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments created a third tier: panchayati raj institutions in rural areas and municipalities in urban ones, with reserved seats for women and for Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

India is among the world's largest economies by nominal GDP and the third largest by purchasing power parity, while remaining a lower-middle-income country in per-capita terms — a gap that explains a great deal about how the country is discussed abroad versus how it is experienced at home.

Services dominate output, contributing over half of gross value added, with information technology, business services, finance and telecommunications the visible face of that. Industry contributes roughly a quarter, and agriculture under a fifth of output — but agriculture still employs a far larger share of the workforce than its output share, which is the structural problem at the centre of Indian development economics.

The informal sector remains very large. A substantial majority of workers are in informal employment without written contracts, provident fund coverage or paid leave, which is why so many of the entitlements described elsewhere on this site apply to a minority of the workforce in practice.

The digital public infrastructure built since 2010 — Aadhaar identity, UPI payments, and the DigiLocker and account aggregator layers on top — has changed everyday administration more than almost any other policy of the period. UPI processes more real-time payment transactions than any other system in the world.

The Reserve Bank of India sets monetary policy under a flexible inflation-targeting framework, and regulates banks, NBFCs and payment systems.

India has a single time zone, IST, at UTC+5:30 — one of the few countries of its width to use one, and half an hour offset from the hour, which is why it is a persistent nuisance in international scheduling.

The financial year runs 1 April to 31 March, which is why so much changes on 1 April: tax slabs, rates, limits, allowances and scheme years.

The Gregorian calendar is used officially alongside the Saka era, which appears on government publications. Festivals follow lunar calendars, so their Gregorian dates move each year.

Three national holidays are observed everywhere — Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August and Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October. Beyond those, holidays are state-specific, and the gazetted list differs meaningfully between states.

Driving is on the left. The electrical supply is 230V, 50Hz, using types C, D and M plugs.

The country calling code is +91. Mobile penetration is close to universal and internet access is overwhelmingly mobile, which is why almost every government portal now has an app and why so many services depend on an OTP to a registered mobile number — losing access to that number is one of the most disruptive things that can happen administratively.