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JUST Response
country factsheets: INDIA
REPUBLIC OF INDIA
- Basic
facts
- Head
of state: Abdul Kalam
- Prime
minister: Manmohan Singh
- World's
largest democracy.
- Population:
1,100 million - world's 2nd-largest population after China.
- Population
growth rate: 1.44%.
- Population
below poverty line: 25%.
- Religions:
Hindu 81.3%, Muslim 12%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%; Buddhist,
Jain, Parsi, etc. 2.5%.
- Public
debt: $95.3 billion.
- Recipient
of $2.9 billion in economic aid (1999).
- GNP
growth rate: 7.6% (2003).
- Total
area: 3,287,590 sq km.
- Currency:
Indian rupee (INR) - US$ 1 = INR 46.13 (July 2004).
- Natural
resources: world's 4th-largest coal reserves, diamonds, petroleum,
iron ore, natural gas, arable land.
- Boom
in information technology and film industry with new rising middle
class.
- World's
leading legal producer of opium for pharmaceutical industry.
-
- Persistent problems
- Inter-caste and inter-communal
tensions.
- Serious discrimination and cruelty
by police against religious minorities and the dalits and adivasis
communities.
- Illegal opium trading, drug
trafficking and money laundering.
- Sharp divide between rich and poor.
- Harassment and
"preventive" arrests of human rights activists.
- Impunity for human rights violators.
- Death penalty, mainly for the poor
and illiterate, and lack of transparency over executions carried
out.
- Estimated HIV/AIDS cases: 5.1
million (2004).
-
- Recent human rights violations
- Increasing erosion of human rights
in context of "anti-terrorism" measures.
- Criminal justice system, police and
prosecutors seen to be increasingly prejudiced.
- Proposed reforms to judicial system
herald even greater threats to human rights.
- Police failure to register
complaints of human rights violations with half of 4,000
complaints in Gujarat state.
- Over 30 new death sentences but no
details of executions.
-
- Important
dates
- 1,000
BC: Caste system established.
- 563-483
BC: Gautama Buddha said to have lived to 80.
- 1857:
First Indian war of independence.
- 1930:
Rise of Mahatma Gandhi.
- 1947:
Independence from UK.
- 1950:
Indian constitution.
- 1984:
Prime minister Indira Gandhi assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.
- 1998:
India tests nuclear device.
[More information will be added at future
updates]
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