nse Forces
Branches: Police, Coast Guard
Military manpower: males 15-49, 68,688; 61,553 fit for military service;
no conscription or compulsory military service
Defense expenditures: none
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Country: India
- Geography
Total area: 3,287,590 km2; land area: 2,973,190 km2
Comparative area: slightly more than one-third the size of the US
Land boundaries: 14,103 km total; Bangladesh 4,053 km, Bhutan 605 km,
Burma 1,463 km, China 3,380, Nepal 1,690 km, Pakistan 2,912 km
Coastline: 7,000 km
Maritime claims:
Contiguous zone: 24 nm;
Continental shelf: edge of continental margin or 200 nm;
Extended economic zone: 200 nm;
Territorial sea: 12 nm
Disputes: boundaries with Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan; water
sharing problems with downstream riparians, Bangladesh over the Ganges
and Pakistan over the Indus
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
Natural resources: coal (fourth-largest reserves in the world), iron ore,
manganese, mica, bauxite, titanium ore, chromite, natural gas, diamonds,
crude oil, limestone
Land use: 55% arable land; 1% permanent crops; 4% meadows and pastures;
23% forest and woodland; 17% other; includes 13% irrigated
Environment: droughts, flash floods, severe thunderstorms common;
deforestation; soil erosion; overgrazing; air and water pollution;
desertification
Note: dominates South Asian subcontinent; near important
Indian Ocean trade routes
- People
Population: 849,746,001 (July 1990), growth rate 2.0% (1990)
Birth rate: 30 births/1,000 population (1990)
Death rate: 10 deaths/1,000 population (1990)
Net migration rate: 0 migrants/1,000 population (1990)
Infant mortality rate: 89 deaths/1,000 live births (1990)
Life expectancy at birth: 57 years male, 59 years female (1990)
Total fertility rate: 3.8 children born/woman (1990)
Nationality: noun--Indian(s); adjective--Indian
Ethnic divisions: 72% Indo-Aryan, 25% Dravidian, 3% Mongoloid and other
Religion: 82.6% Hindu, 11.4% Muslim, 2.4% Christian, 2.0% Sikh, 0.7%
Buddhist, 0.5% Jains, 0.4% other
Language: Hindi, English, and 14 other official languages--Bengali,
Telgu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya,
Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; 24 languages sp
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