Location: Southern Asia, between Pakistan and Burma (20 00 N, 77 00 E)
Land Area: 2,973,190 square kilometers
Coastline: 7,000 kilometers
Highest Point: 8,598 meters (Kanchenjunga)
Lowest Point: 0 meters (Indian Ocean)
Notable Landmarks: Take a peek...

Gross Domestic Product (GDP): $3.678 trillion (2005 est.)
GDP Per Capita: $3,400 (2005 est.)
Number of Workers: 496.4 million (2005 est.)
Unemployment Rate: 9% (2005 est.)
Industries: chemicals, steel, petroleum, software, food processing
Currency: Indian Rupee (INR) What does it look like?

Type of Government: Federal Republic
Head of State: President Abdul Kalam (since 26 Jul 2002)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (since 22 May 2004)
Capital City: New Delhi
Legal Age to Vote: 18
Flag Design: three bands of color (orange, white, green) with a blue spoked-circle in the middle of the white band
Official Language: English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication. Hindi is the national language of 30% of the people. There are 14 other official languages --- Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit.
Religions: Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)

With the world's 2nd largest population, India is proud to call itself the world's largest democracy. India is home to one of the oldest civilizations, the Indus Valley. India became an independent nation in 1947.