India 2 Essay Research Paper INDIAIndia officially

India 2 Essay, Research Paper

INDIA

India, officially republic of India is a country in Southern Asia, which consists entirely of the Indian Peninsula and parts of the Asian mainland. On the north, one can find Afghanistan, China, Nepal, and Bhutan; on the east, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Bay of Bengal; on the south, by Palk Strait, and the Gulf of Manhar, and the Indian ocean; and on the west, by the Arabian Sea and Pakistan (1). India has an area of 3,165,596 sq. km. The capital of India is New Delhi, and the countries largest city is Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). It is the second most populated country in the world after China with a population of 984,003,683. Currently the growth rate for India is at 1.71 percent. India is known around the world as one of the worst poverty stricken and malnourished countries ever (2).

India’s economy includes traditional village farming, modern agriculture, handicrafts, a wide variety of modern industries, and numerous support services. Nearly 400 million, which is 67 percent of India’s labor force, works in agriculture, which supplies 30 percent of the country’s GDP. Production, trade, and investment reforms since 1991 have given new opportunities for Indian business persons and an average of 300 million middle class consumers. Many of the country’s fundamentals which includes saving rates (26 percent of GDP) and reserves (now about $24 billion) are healthy. Inflation eased to 7 percent in 1997, and interest rates dropped to between 10 percent and 13 percent. However, the Indian government still needs to restore the early momentum of reform, especially in continuing to reduce the remaining government regulations. Furthermore economic policy changes have not yet significantly increased jobs or reduced the risk that international finance strains redevelop within the next few years. Nearly 40 percent of the Indian population remains too poor to afford an adequate diet. India’s exports, currency, and foreign institutional investment were affected by the East Asia crisis in late 1997 and early 1998. Export growth has been decreasing in 1996-97, averaging only about 4 percent to 5 percent, which is a large crop from 20 percent increases it was having over the prior three years- mostly because of the fall in Asian currencies relative to the rupee. Energy, telecommunications, transportation shortages, and the estate of inefficient factories compel industrial growth which expanded only 6.7 percent. In 1997- down from more than 11 percent in 1996. Growth of the agricultural sector is still slowly bouncing back to 5.7 percent from a fall of 0.1 percent in 996 (2). Successive five year plans since 1951, have slowly achieved a steady rate of economic growth, except for periods of severe drought.

Agriculture generates about one-third of the value of India’s annual GDP. Most farms are very small. In terms of area sown, the leading crop is rice, the staple foodstuff of a large part of the Indian population. Wheat comes next in importance to rice, and India is also among the leading producers in the world of sugar cane, tea, cotton, and jute. Cashews, coffee, and spices are also important cash crops. Other crops include vegetables, melons, sorghum, millet, corn, barley, chickpeas, bananas, mangoes, rubber, and linseed. The raising of livestock particularly horned cattle, buffalo, horses and mule is a central feature of the agricultural economy of India. These animals are utilized most exclusively as beast of burden, mainly because meat consumption, according to religious or social scruples is not permitted among the Hindu’s. As a result, the breeds of cattle in India are generally inferior (1).

The Republic of India is governed according to the plan of a constitution adopted in 1949, which includes various features of the constitutional systems of Great Britian, the United States, and other Western democracies. By the terms of the Indian organic law the government is federal in its structure and republican in character. Similar to the United States, India is a union of states, but its government is more highly concentrated than the US government, and rights that the states are territories have are severely limited.

The Chief executive and head of state in India is president. The job of the president in government is mostly symbolic and ceremonial, nevertheless the actual executive power dwells on a council of members responsible to the parliament, which is made up of the Council of States and the House of People. The president is elected for a five-year term by an electoral college which consists of the elected members of the national and state legislatures and is eligible for consecutive terms.

The House of the People consist of 545 members which are elected by universal adult suffrage, except for a couple members who are selected by the president to represent the Anglo-Indian community. Members of the House of the People normally serve for five years, which is the statutory limit for the duration of the house, but the house may be broken up upon defeat of major legislation which is always planned by the executive branch of Government. In many aspects the Government of India is similar to that of the U.S. except that the U.S has the advantage in that it’s much more liberal (1).

Ancient India was a country of considerable educational development, with universities that attracted many for