The Republic of India is a federal republic, governed under a constitution and incorporating various features of the constitutional systems of the United Kingdom, the United States, and other democracies. The power of the government is separated into three branches: executive, parliament, and a judiciary headed by a Supreme Court. Like the United States, India is a union of states, but its federalism is slightly different. The central government has power over the states, including the power to redraw state boundaries, but the states, many of which have large populations sharing a common language, culture, and history, have an identity that is in some ways more significant than that of the country as a whole.
India’s constitution went into effect in 1950, providing civil liberties protected by a set of fundamental rights. These include not only rights to free speech, assembly, association, and the exercise of religion—echoing the United States Bill of Rights—but also rights such as that of citizens to conserve their culture and language and to establish schools to aid this endeavor. The constitution also lists principles of national policy, such as the duty of the government to secure equal pay for men and women, provision of free legal aid, and protection and improvement of the environment. India has universal voting rights for adults beginning at age 18.
The Indian parliament has amended the constitution many times since 1950. Most of these amendments were minor, but others were of major significance: For example, the 7th amendment (1956) provided for a major reorganization of the boundaries of the states, and the 73rd and 74th amendments (1993) gave constitutional permanence to units of local self-government (village and city councils).
The head of state of India is the president. The role of president, modeled on the British constitutional monarch, is largely nominal and ceremonial. Most powers assigned to the president are exercised under direction of the cabinet. The president’s major political responsibility is to select the prime minister, although that choice is circumscribed by a constantly evolving set of conventions (for example, that the leader of the party with the largest number of seats in parliament should be given the first opportunity to form a government).
The president is elected for a five-year term by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of the national and state legislatures. The president is eligible for successive terms. The vice president is elected in the same manner as the president and assumes the role of the president if the president is incapacitated or otherwise unable to perform his or her duties.
A council of ministers, or cabinet, is headed by a prime minister and wields executive power at the national level. The council, which is responsible to parliament, is selected by the president upon the advice of the prime minister. Each council member heads an administrative department of the central government. In most important respects, the Indian cabinet system is identical to that of Britain. There is a constitutionally fixed division of responsibilities between national and state governments, so that the national government has exclusive powers over areas such as foreign affairs, while the states are responsible for health-care systems and agricultural development, among other areas. Some areas are the joint responsibility of both the national and state governments, such as education.
The actual administration is carried out by a many-tiered civil service, almost all of whom are recruited by a competitive, merit-based examination. At the top is the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), whose senior members serve as the administrative heads of departments, responsible only to their minister. All members of this service are assigned to particular states and spend most of their early career serving in those states. They typically start as district-level administrators and rapidly move to head state-level departments. Additional central government civil services include the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Police Service, and services for audits and accounts, posts and telegraphs, customs and excise, and railroads.
The constitution vests national legislative power in a parliament of two houses: the Lok Sabha (House of the People), the lower house, and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States), the upper house. The Lok Sabha consists of 545 members directly elected by universal adult suffrage, except for two members who are appointed by the president to represent the Anglo-Indian community. The number of seats allocated to each state and union territory is proportional to its population. The term of the Lok Sabha is limited to five years, but the president may dissolve the house upon the advice of the prime minister, or upon defeat of major legislation proposed by the government. A provision of the constitution that was intended to expire after ten years, but which has been consistently extended, allocates reserved seats to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in proportion to their share of the population.
Members of the Rajya Sabha are elected by the members of the state legislative assemblies, except for 12 presidential appointees who have special knowledge or practical experience in literature, the arts, science, or social services. The elected members are chosen by a system of proportional representation for a six-year term; one-third of the Rajya Sabha is chosen every two years. A two-thirds majority is required for some constitutional amendments to pass; some amendments also require ratification by one-half of the states.
Judicial authority in India is exercised through a system of national courts administering the laws of the republic and the states. All senior judges are appointees of the executive branch of the government, with their independence guaranteed by a variety of safeguards. Noteworthy among these safeguards is a provision requiring a two-thirds vote of parliament to remove a judge from office. The highest court is the Supreme Court; all Supreme Court judges serve until a retirement age of 65. The top court at the state level is called the High Court; members of the Supreme Court are selected from among justices of the High Courts. Judges of the High Courts are in turn selected from subordinate courts operating at the district level. Important judicial posts at the district level are filled by members of the administrative service.
India is a union of 28 states and 7 union territories. The Indian states are Andhra Pradesh, Arunāchal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Bihār, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarāt, Haryāna, Himāchal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmīr, Jharkhand, Karnātaka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Mahārāshtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Rājasthān, Sikkim, Tamil Nādu, Tripura, Uttaranchal, and Uttar Pradesh. The union territories are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandīgarh, Dādra and Nagar Haveli, Damān and Diu, Delhi (formally called the National Capital Territory of Delhi), Lakshadweep, and Pondicherry. The form of state governments in India is generally modeled after that of the central government. The states each have a legislature invested with the governance of state affairs. The union territories of Delhi and Pondicherry also have their own legislatures. Each of these 30 political units is formally headed by a governor, who is appointed by the president of India to a five-year term. The governor’s powers resemble those of the president. The governor’s most important duty is to invite a party leader to form a government after state legislative elections.
The basic territorial unit of administration in the states is the district; at the 1991 census India had 466 districts. Within the districts are units called tehsils or talukas for departments such as revenue and education, and “blocks,” which are the base units for agrarian development. Local self-government includes village councils (panchayats) and municipal councils, which began under British rule. Local governments have been saddled with major duties, few sources of revenue, and a weak base of political power. These bodies were frequently superseded for long periods by the state governments. In the mid-1990s new constitutional provisions, including the requirement that a percentage of village council seats must go to women, were implemented to help improve these local governments. A few states, most notably West Bengal and Karnātaka, had successful village government systems in the 1980s and 1990s.
The central government of India created three new states in November 2000. The new states were carved out of three existing states—Uttaranchal from Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh, and Jharkhand from Bihār—to create smaller, more manageable administrative areas. The new states are populated by tribal groups that had waged decades-long campaigns for the creation of separate states in the interest of cultural autonomy and regional economic development.
Political parties play an important role in India’s democracy. For many years a centrist national party known as the Congress Party was the most powerful political party in India. Established in 1885 as the Indian National Congress, it led India in the struggle for independence. Its members have included influential figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. With few exceptions, the Congress Party provided the country’s prime ministers until the mid-1990s. The Congress, also known after 1977 as the Congress (I) Party, significantly declined in popular support in the 1990s due to allegations of corruption.
A Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata (Indian People’s) Party (BJP), became the largest single party in the Lok Sabha in 1996 and retained that position in the 1998 and 1999 elections. Unable to win an outright majority, it led a multiparty coalition called the National Democratic Alliance. The BJP found its base of support in the growing Hindu middle class. It continued policies of economic liberalization that had been initiated by the Congress Party. The reforms led to rapid and sustained economic growth, but much of India’s population remained in poverty. In the 2004 elections, the BJP lost control of the Lok Sabha to the Congress Party, which had campaigned on a platform that appealed to India’s rural poor.
Other important parties in India include the Janata Dal (People’s Party), a secular, socialist party appealing to lower caste and Muslim voters. The Janata Dal was a key member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The Janata Dal and the BJP are the primary successors to the Janata (People’s) Party, which was a coalition of opposition parties that formed in 1977 and defeated the Congress Party in that year’s elections. The coalition’s victory represented the first change in the ruling party of the national government after India gained independence. However, the coalition fractured in 1979 and its government collapsed, leading to the return to power of the Congress Party in 1980.
The far left of the political spectrum is dominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which draws support from urban and rural laborers, and the more moderate Communist Party of India. Both parties have been significant participants in coalition politics.
Regional parties are of major importance in many states, including Tamil Nādu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and several smaller states, particularly in the northeast. These regional parties deliberately focus on support of particular people of a particular state and thus have no ambition of extending their reach to other states. They elect a significant number of members of parliament, and many have been included in coalition governments by forming alliances with larger parties.
India’s central government has focused on improving the welfare of the Indian people since independence. The focus has been on transforming the health of the population and providing benefits for the weakest members of the society, especially scheduled castes and tribes, women, and children. These efforts have resulted in improvements, although the degree varies by state.
Health-care facilities have been extended to all parts of the country, with more than 20,000 primary health centers and more than 100,000 subcenters in operation. Still, the number and quality of personnel staffing them are less than desirable, and spending levels have been low. Although the number of hospital beds in relation to the population has increased since independence, there are still too few doctors for the population, particularly in rural areas. There are 2,462 people per physician, and 1,271 people per hospital bed. The government also promotes family planning and alternate systems of health care, particularly those with deep Indian roots such as Ayurvedic medicine.
Life expectancy at birth was 64 years in 2005, compared with 32 years in 1941. The infant mortality rate is still high at about 56 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005, down from about 150 per 1,000 live births in the late 1940s. Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, and deaths on a large scale due to cholera, influenza, and other similar diseases have also been eliminated. Malaria and tuberculosis occur at much reduced rates, but new drug-resistant varieties are cause for concern. While cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) numbered only a few thousand in the early 1990s, the virus that causes AIDS had infected about 5,100,000 people by 2003. Efforts to check the spread of the disease have focused on the most at-risk groups, including prostitutes in major cities and drug users. In some areas, meanwhile, the disease has made its way into the general population, creating a potential crisis for India’s already overburdened health-care system. Malnutrition remains a serious problem, despite the gradually increasing amount of grain available per capita (rice, wheat, and grains such as millet remain the major food source of most Indians). Public sanitation facilities are not adequate, and in most areas, including most towns, smaller cities, and the countryside, are almost nonexistent.
Welfare programs for the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes (including the Harijans, or Untouchables) have centered on “compensatory discrimination,” which is similar to affirmative action: Positions are reserved for this population in the legislature, civil services, and educational institutions. Also, education subsidies are provided, including scholarships and reduced fees. A national commission for scheduled castes and tribes monitors progress in ending discrimination against these groups and progress in their social and economic standing. Public discrimination has become rare, and quite a few individuals have risen to positions of influence and respect, including India’s first Harijan president, Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who was elected in 1997. Private discrimination in housing and employment continues, however, and the desperately poor of the countryside, constituting the majority of these groups, remain virtually powerless against exploitation and physical abuse.
There are a wide variety of programs intended to improve the welfare of women and children, but they have had little impact in parts of the country (particularly the northern states) where the problem is most acute. Female children suffer particularly: They are often neglected in infancy, sometimes resulting in death. Also, they may be kept out of school or married off early. Programs for children, such as those for supplemental nutrition, have little effect in situations where child labor is endemic.
All branches of the armed services of India are made up solely of volunteers. Service, however, is considered a national duty, and competition for entry into the armed forces remains high. Although defense is considered important in India, the percentage of the GDP spent on defense has declined. It was 2.6 percent in 2003. Salaries and pensions account for a major portion of defense spending. In 2003 the strength of the army was 1.1 million, the navy comprised 55,000 members, and the air force had 170,000 people. Of 636,000 people in the paramilitary forces, 432,000 serve in units that guard the borders and join with police in suppressing insurgencies. Women have long served in the medical areas of the armed services but have only recently been allowed in limited numbers to enroll as officers in other noncombatant sections of the armed services.
Military units of all branches are well equipped. India has received extensive military aid, especially from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Many of its weapons systems, including some of the most advanced such as missiles, are manufactured in India. The country exploded its first nuclear device in 1974, leading to an arms race with neighboring Pakistan. Exactly 24 years later, India set off five more nuclear devices and declared itself a “nuclear weapons state.” Pakistan responded within weeks with its own nuclear tests.
| I | | International Organizations |
India is a founding member of the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank). India is also a member of other organizations of the UN system, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Labor Organization (ILO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Trade Organization (WTO), and Universal Postal Union. Since 1961 India has been a member of the Nonaligned Movement, a group of nations that did not align themselves with either the United States or the USSR during the Cold War. In keeping with its policy of nonalignment, India has not joined regional security arrangements. However, India has contributed troops and observers to international peacekeeping missions around the world, including the Egypt-Israel border, Lebanon, Cyprus, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. India is one of seven member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which was founded in 1985 to provide a forum for regional economic and social issues.