Fact Sheet: The United States and India Announce Historic Trade Deal U S. Embassy & Consulates in India

Many Indian species have descended from those of Gondwana, the southern supercontinent from which India separated more than 100 million years ago. India has two natural zones of thorn forest, one in the Deccan Plateau, immediately east of the Western Ghats, and the other in the western part of the Indo-Gangetic plain, now turned into rich agricultural land by irrigation, its features no longer visible. India’s most dense forests, such as the tropical moist forest of the Andaman Islands, the Western Ghats, and Northeast India, occupy approximately 3% of its land area. India is a megadiverse country, a term employed for 17 countries that display high biological diversity and contain many species exclusively indigenous, or endemic, to them. According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century. The Thar Desert plays a crucial role in attracting the moisture-laden south-west summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide the majority of India’s rainfall.

The election saw a resurgence of India’s opposition, which won 234 seats. Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi was elected for a third term as India’s prime minister in June 2024. A teacher and former governor of Jharkhand State, she is the first person from a tribal community to serve as India’s head of state.

Early modern India

A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the non-European British Empire and an influence on other nationalist movements. In south India, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture. The resulting Delhi Sultanate drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.

British Raj

Its government lasted two years; Morarji Desai and Charan Singh served as prime ministers. After the India–Pakistan war of 1965, Shastri died in January 1966, soon after signing the Tashkent Peace Declaration. The Congress is considered the ideological centre in Indian political culture; the BJP is right-wing. India hosts more than five hundred wildlife sanctuaries and eighteen biosphere reserves, four of which are part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; its eighty-nine wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.

• India has reduced its rate of poverty but its economic inequality has increased.
• The decimal number system in use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics.
• Traditional sports include kabaddi, kho kho, and gilli-danda, which are played throughout India.
• The 522-million-worker Indian labour force is the world’s second largest, as of 2017update.
• Indian timeline takes us on a journey of the history of the subcontinent.

The country’s usage of coal is a major cause of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, but its renewable energy is growing. In 2022, India became the world’s third-largest vehicle market after China and the United States, surpassing Japan. India’s nominal GDP per capita increased steadily from US$308 in 1991, when economic liberalisation began, to US$1,380 in 2010, to an estimated US$2,731 in 2024. India was the world’s second-largest textile exporter after China in the 2013 calendar year. In 2006, the share of external trade in India’s GDP stood at 24%, up from 6% in 1985.

Simultaneously, the vast Tethyan oceanic crust, to its northeast, began to subduct under the Eurasian Plate. Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India. In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers, fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors. Between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, diffused into India from the northwest. The meaning of Hindustan has varied, referring to a region encompassing the northern Indian subcontinent (present-day northern India and Pakistan) or to India in its near entirety.

There are over bet 365 a quarter of a million local government bodies at city, town, district, block and village levels. India has a three-tier unitary independent judiciary comprising the supreme court, headed by the Chief Justice of India, 25 high courts, and a large number of trial courts. In the Indian parliamentary system, the executive is subordinate to the legislature; the prime minister and their council are directly responsible to the lower house of the parliament. The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth.

It is also commonly worn with an Indian blouse, or choli, which serves as the primary upper-body garment, the sari’s end—passing over the shoulder—covering the midriff and obscuring the upper body’s contours. In its modern form, it is combined with an underskirt, or Indian petticoat, and tucked in along the waist band for more secure fastening. From ancient times until the advent of the modern, the most widely worn traditional dress in India was draped. Dance has been an essential aspect of Indian films from the first talkies of the 1930s. Among 20th-century directions is the modern dance of Uday Shankar in which classical styles were employed but not adhered to rigidly.

Indus valley civilization, which flourished between 2800 BC and 1800 BC, had an advanced and flourishing economic system. It was followed by India’s struggle for independence, which we got in the year 1947. It resulted into the formation of the Delhi Sultanate, which was finally succeeded by the Mughal Empire, under which India once again achieved a large measure of political unity.

Its Commander-in-Chief is the President of India, but the Ministry of Defence manages the military. All the states (and the territories of Delhi and Puducherry) elect their local government themselves. States and union territories differ in the way they are represented. In total, there are twenty-eight states and eight union territories. Most of these pieces are called states; others are called union territories.

The name Bhārat (भारत; pronounced ˈbʱaːɾət (listenⓘ)) is found in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India. The Old Persian name was used for the eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire. Latin took the name from Hellenistic Greek India (Ἰνδία), from ancient Greek Indos (Ἰνδός) and then from Old Persian Hinduš. The Oxford English Dictionary (third edition ) says that the name “India” comes from the Classical Latin name India.

Crafts of Kutch – Rogan art, ajrakh & more (Gujarat , India) Mechuka is often referred to as the ‘Last Shangri-La’ of India due to its remote location and pristine natural beauty. Standing as the highest waterfall in Mizoram and the 13th highest in India, Vantawng Waterfalls captivates visitors with its magnificence. The Neermahal is one of the only two water palaces in India. The Kachari Ruins are mysterious mushroom-domed pillars built by the Dimasa Kachari Kingdoms before the Ahom invasion in the 13th century. The Cochin International Airport is the first in the world to operate solely on solar energy.