This section of India Facts contains information on diverse aspects of Indian culture, rich and diverse as a result unique in its very own way. Indian culture tells us to multiply and spread joy and happiness and share sadness and pain. It teach us to co-operate with each other and subsequently make this world a better place to live in. The vast cultural diversity is manifested in the religious monuments like temples, mosques etc.
India, the biggest democracy in the world is also one of the most populated countries. India is a land of many different cultures and is a secular nation where freedom to practice any religion is given. The economy of India is one of the fastest growing economies of the world and if this upward progression continues, India will soon be counted amongst the developed super powers of the world.
Official Name
'Bharat' in Hindi and 'Republic of India' in English.
Capital
New Delhi, also referred as the National Capital Territory (NCT).
Location
India comes under South Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, in between Myanmar and Pakistan.
Type of Government
Federal Republic
Independence
15 August 1947
Constitution
Formulated on 26 January, 1950 (Amended on many occasions)
Republic Day on 26 January marks the adoption of the constitution.
Religious Composition
Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (As per the 2001 census)
Internet Country Code
.in
Major Political Parties
Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP; Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP; Biju Janata Dal or BJD; Communist Party of India or CPI; Communist Party of India-Marxist or CPI-M; Dravida Munnetra Kazagham or DMK; Indian National Congress or INC; Janata Dal (United) or JD(U); Jharkhand Mukti Morcha or JMM; Lok Jan Shakti Party or LJSP ; Nationalist Congress Party or NCP ; Pattali Makkal Katchi or PMK ; Rashtriya Janata Dal or RJD ; Samajwadi Party or SP ; Shiromani Akali Dal or SAD ; Shiv Sena
Administrative Divisions
28 States and 7 Union Territories*; Andaman and Nicobar Islands*, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh*, Chhattisgarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli*, Daman and Diu*, Delhi*, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep*, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Puducherry*, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal
Voting Age
18 years and above
Apex Court of Justice
Supreme Court of India in New Delhi.
Motto
Satyameva Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs)
Currency
Indian Rupee (INR)
Fiscal Year
1 April - 31 March  India is rich in its children. With a child population of 44o million and another 26 million being added every year, India is the youngest country in the world. However the economic progress made in the recent past has not filtered into the social sector.
- In India today, one out of every two children under 3 years of age is malnourished.
- Half of all Indian children are not in school.
- India has 420 million kids. That’s more than the US and UK combined.
- One in four Indian girls are sexually abused before the age of 4.
- 52% of girls aged 6-10 are out of school.
- 48% of boys aged 6-10 are out of school.
There are thousands and thousands of children in the slums of Kolkata who have never gone to school, do not have any basic training, no proper shelter and no sanitation. Indian slum population doubles in two decades  div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited { color:#06c; } The number of people living in slums in India has more than doubled in the past two decades and now exceeds the entire population of Britain, the Indian Government has announced. India’s slum-dwelling population had risen from 27.9 million in 1981 to 61.8 million in 2001, when the last census was done, Kumari Selja, the Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, said. The figure is the latest illustration of how India’s recent economic boom has left behind millions of the country’s poorest people, raising fears that social unrest could undermine further growth. India’s economy has grown by an average of 8 per cent annually over the past four years, and yet a quarter of its population of 1.1 billion still lives on less than $1 (50p) a day. The expansion of India’s slums is partly due to the rise in India’s total population, which increased from 683 million in 1981 to 1.03 billion in 2001. That has been exacerbated by mass migration from the countryside as millions of farmers have forsaken the diminishing returns of small-scale agriculture to seek the relatively high wages of manual labourers in India’s cities. But the ballooning slum population is also evidence of the Government’s failure to build enough housing and other basic infrastructure for its urban poor, many of whom live without electricity, gas or running water. India’s largest slum population is in Bombay, the country’s financial and film capital, where an estimated 6.5 million people – at least half the city’s residents – live in tiny makeshift shacks surrounded by open sewers. Bombay is also home to Dharavi, Asia’s biggest single slum, which is estimated to house more than a million people. Delhi, the national capital, has the country’s second-largest slum population, totalling about 1.8 million people, followed by Calcutta with about 1.5 million. Mrs Selja says that it will cost India four trillion rupees (£49 billion) to build the estimated 24 million housing units needed to accommodate India’s slum-dwellers. She has called for the Government and the private sector to address the problem jointly and has launched several schemes to provide basic public services to slum-dwellers. But civil rights activists accuse the Government of willfully neglecting India’s slums, while favouring commercial property developers who often bribe local officials and fund politicians’ election campaigns. “The rise in slums is due to the lack of affordable housing provided by the Government,” said Maju Varghese, of YUVA Urban, a nongovernmental organisation that has been working with the urban poor for more than 20 years. “The Government has withdrawn from the whole area of housing and land prices have gone to such heights that people can’t afford proper housing,” he said.
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