5 Key excerpts on "India"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Geography of India

  Sacred and Historic Places

  • Britannica Educational Publishing, Kenneth Pletcher(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Britannica Educational Publishing

    (Publisher)

  EOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW

  I ndia—officially Republic of India (Hindi: Bharat)—is a country that occupies the greater part of South Asia. It is a constitutional republic consisting of 28 states, each with a substantial degree of control over its own affairs; six less fully empowered union territories; and the Delhi national capital territory, which includes New Delhi, India’s capital. With roughly one-sixth of the world’s total population, India is the second most populous country, after China, and, in area, it ranks as the seventh-largest country in the world. India’s frontier, which is roughly one-third coastline, abuts six countries. It is bounded to the northwest by Pakistan, to the north by Nepal, China, and Bhutan; and to the east by Myanmar (Burma). Bangladesh to the east is surrounded by India to the north, east, and west. The island country of Sri Lanka is situated some 40 miles (65 km) off the southeast coast of India across the Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar.

  The land of India—together with Bangladesh and most of Pakistan—forms a well-defined subcontinent, set off from the rest of Asia by the imposing northern mountain rampart of the Himalayas and by adjoining mountain ranges to the west and east. The most northerly portion of the subcontinent, the Kashmir region, has been in dispute between India and Pakistan since British India was partitioned into the two countries in 1947. Although each country claims sovereignty over Kashmir, for decades the region has been divided administratively between the two; in addition, China administers portions of Kashmir territory adjoining its border.

  Much of India’s territory lies within a large peninsula, surrounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east; Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of the Indian mainland, marks the dividing line between these two bodies of water. Two of India’s union territories are composed entirely of islands: Lakshadweep, in the Arabian Sea, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which lie between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

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  eBook - ePub

  Transcultural Geriatrics

  Caring for the Elderly of Indo-Asian Origin

  • Partha Ghosh, Shahid Anis Khan(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  India is situated in southern Asia, between Bangladesh and Burma on the east and Pakistan on the west. The Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal make its southern border and China is its most prominent northern neighbour. The capital is New Delhi.

  The total area of India is 3 287 590 sq km and the climate varies from tropical monsoon in the south to temperate in the north. Water-borne and infectious diseases are common. Air pollution is an issue in most large cities.

  Population

  1 049 700 118. Currently, India is the second most populated country in the world. The elderly over 65 constitute over 4.8% of the population.

  Population growth

  1.47%

  Life expectancy

  Total population: 63.62 years Male: 62.92 years Female: 64.37 years

  Literacy rate

  Definition: age 15 and over can read and write Total population: 59.5% Male: 70.2% Female: 48.3%

  Ethnic groups

  Indo-Aryan 72% Dravidian 25% Mongolian and other 3%

  Religions

  Hindu 81.3% Muslim 12% Christian 2.3% Sikh 1.9% Jain, Parsi, Buddhist 2.5%

  Languages

  Hindi, the national language 30% Bengali Telugu Marathi Tamil Urdu Gujrati Malayalam Kannada Oriya Punjabi Assamese Kashmiri Sindhi Sanskrit English is the most important national language for communication.

  Population below poverty line

  25%

  GDP per capita

  Purchasing power parity – $2600

  Islamic Republic of Pakistan

  Geography

  Pakistan is located in South East Asia and stretches from the Arabian Sea in the south to the mountain ranges in the north. Pakistan shares its eastern border with India and its north Eastern border with China. Afghanistan is the north western neighbour and Iran is to the south west.

  Pakistan has some of the most ancient historical sites in the world, dating back over 5000 years. The Indus Valley civilisation is one of the oldest in the world.

  With a total area of 796 095 sq km, Pakistan is nearly four times the size of the UK. There is a flat plain in the Punjab but mountains in the north and north west, with the highest point being K2 (Mount Godwin-Austen, 8611 m), the second highest peak in the world. Pakistan has seven of the 16 tallest peaks in Asia and 40 of the world’s 50 highest mountains are in Pakistan. The capital is Islamabad.

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  Economic Development: A Regional, Institutional, and Historical Approach

  A Regional, Institutional and Historical Approach

  • Richard Grabowski, Sharmistha Self, William Shields(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6

  South Asia

  Introduction

  South Asia comprises the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Although this chapter throws some light on the region of South Asia as a whole, the discussion concentrates specifically on India because it is the largest democracy in the region and, perhaps more importantly, because India plays a major role in the current global economic environment. The South Asian region, home to 1.4 billion people, is rich in history and cultural heritage. The countries in the region are unique in various aspects, but they also share several common elements other than geographic proximity. Several unique characteristics and controversial aspects set South Asian states apart from other developing countries. For the past decade, South Asia has been the second-fastest-growing region in the world, after East Asia, yet 45 percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1 a day, comprising about 40 percent of the world’s poor. Rapid population growth and high population density pose serious threats to some of these countries.

  The countries of South Asia all have a typical monsoon-type climate and depend on the monsoon rains for their crop yields. This has a direct impact on their economic performance because most of their economies are dominated by the agricultural sector, which uses mostly traditional, labor-intensive technology. Even for countries, such as India, that experienced the so-called Green Revolution, the economy is still heavily dependent on the uncertain monsoon rains for much of its agriculture, which in the past accounted for two-thirds of its gross domestic product (GDP).

  The region is dominated by three main religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, but a host of other religions are also prevalent. The diverse religions are important in shaping the societies, the culture, and history of South Asia. The region is characterized by different ethnic, racial, and cultural groups associated with language, common ancestry, locality, or customs and beliefs. Moreover, the region is also home to various tribes characterized by unique tribal cultures.

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  Shared Space: Divided Space

  Essays on Conflict and Territorial Organization

  • Michael Chisholm, David M. Smith, Michael Chisholm, David M. Smith(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The space that the big three occupy as separate and independent sovereign states has quite often in history been divided in different ways. There is little that is inherently ‘natural’ about the current arrangement: indeed, there are many questions which are raised by the current political map which command immediate attention. Why is it that the Punjab is divided between the Indian and the Pakistani Punjab – though both sides use the same language? Why is it that Bengal, throughout which there is a continuity of Bengali language and culture, is similarly divided? Why, if India can include Assam and Kerala within a federation, is Bangladesh a sovereign state and not part of the federation?

  There are other questions which the map does not pose directly, but which seem curious given the proximities of the countries. Why do India and Pakistan trade so little with each other? Why do India’s neighbours seem to fear that she meddles in their affairs, when India protests that she never does unless invited in or unless trouble spills over her borders? Why has India, such a large polyglot federation, survived as a democracy, when Pakistan and Bangladesh have not?

  Behind all of these questions is the assumption that South Asia is in some sense a well-defined geographical region of the world, and that there are few obvious natural subdivisions within it. This is the starting point.

  South Asia as a geopolitical region

  Cohen (1963) divides the world deductively into, first, geostrategic regions, and then geopolitical regions. His geostrategic regions are multi-featured in cultural and economic terms, but are single-featured in trade orientation and are also distinct arenas within which power can be projected. His division of the world broadly follows Mackinder’s views: there is the Maritime Dependent Trading world and the Eurasian Continental power. Between these two are the ‘shatterbelts’ of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The geopolitical region is defined as a sub-division of the geostrategic:

  It expresses the unity of geographic features. Because it is derived directly from geographic regions, this unit can provide a framework for common political and economic actions. Contiguity of location and complementarity of resources are particularly distinguishing marks of the geopolitical region. (Cohen 1963, 62).

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  South Asia

  Boundaries, Borders and Beyond

  • Dhananjay Tripathi, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Dhananjay Tripathi, Sanjay Chaturvedi(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Introduction – South Asia: Boundaries, Borders and Beyond

  Dhananjay Tripathi 1 and Sanjay Chaturvedi2

  Post-Colonial and Post-Partition South Asia

  South Asia as a post-colonial as well as a post-partition region has a lot to offer to those interested in the geopolitical triad of bordering, ordering and othering (van Houtum and van Naerssen 2002 ). Several of these practices – that feed into and are in turn fed by boundary producing formal and popular narratives – continue to unfold on a sub-continent that eminently qualifies as ecologically-geographically connected but remains geopolitically partitioned, and are yet to be theorized. The Janus-faced nature of South Asian borderlands – the inward nationalizing inclinations entangled with the outward regional frontier-orientations – are a stark reminder of the reality that is often overlooked: the history of mobility in this part of the world is much older than the history of territoriality.

  The geopolitical triad or triangle mentioned above (i.e. bordering, ordering and othering) comes with a heavy price tag for the inhabitants of the sub-continent, especially for those communities whose homeland landed in a suddenly erupted borderland in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India, which caused the death of nearly one million people and more than ten million were displaced. Whose territory was being partitioned in 1947 (Chaturvedi 2005 ) is a question that remains unanswered even today.

  It is useful to acknowledge at the outset that contemporary South Asia is, paradoxically, both a rich and poor region due to the mismatch between opportunities and capacities. It is a region where people across borders are culturally and socially interrelated but this commonality is not reflected in state-to-state relations of two nuclear powers – India and Pakistan. South Asia is both one of the fastest-growing and one of the least integrated regions of the world. It is also a region of contrasts, marked by both optimism and pessimism and features many intricacies. This dichotomy of strength and weakness, security and insecurity, hope and fear with connections and disconnects is a remarkable, if not unusual, feature of South Asia and gives birth to borders and boundaries with different kinds of territoriality. Some of the enduring legacies of this partition include truncated territories, economies, cultures and unforgettable memories. As pointed out by Ranabir Samaddar (2005

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