Fast Facts

Location

• Southern Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, between Burma and Pakistan

Population

• 1,080,264,388 (July 2005 est.)

Coastline

• 7,000 km

Climate

• varies from tropical monsoon in south to temperate in north

Terrain

• upland plain (Deccan Plateau) in south, flat to rolling plain along the Ganges, deserts in west, Himalayas in north

Land Use

• arable land: 54.4%
  permanent crops: 2.74%
  other: 42.86% (2001)

Natural Hazards

• droughts; flash floods, as well as widespread and destructive flooding from monsoonal rains; severe thunderstorms; earthquakes

Age Structure of Population

• 0-14 years: 31.2% (male 173,634,432/female 163,932,475)
  15-64 years: 63.9% (male 356,932,082/female 333,283,590)
  65 years and over: 4.9% (male 26,542,025/female 25,939,784) (2005 est.)

Ethinc Groups

• Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000)

Religion

• Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)

Languages

• English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language

Government Type

• federal republic