Essay on India: An Outstanding Essay Written on India

India has played a vital role in shaping the lives and fortunes of all the people inhibit­ing South Asia. In its physical dimensions and characteristics, it is truly sub continental. It is a collection of lands and climates, of diverse races and creeds, and of multitu­dinous contrasts.

Next to China, it is the second most populous nation in the world and at the current rate of increase will con­tain over one billion people by the next decade, and will surpass that of China by 2025. The richness and complexity of its physical and cultural make-up can be best understood by an exploration of its major divisions.

The Northern Lowlands:

The Northern Lowlands is a vast allu­vial plain composed mostly of the Ganga River system, and partly of the Indus River system. It stretches for nearly 920 miles (1,480 km) from Pakistan to Bangla­desh and covers over 150,000 sq miles (388,500 sq km) of territory. This is the “heartland” of Indian civilization, the home of glorious kingdoms of the past and of great cities. By religion and tradition, this vast plain has a mystical quality about it.

Many of India’s major cities, rich and fa­mous in history, centers of immense importance in religion and politics repre­senting various phases of Indian thought and development, line riverbanks of the River Ganga and its tributaries. These in­clude Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, and Kolkata.

In general, it is a featureless, alluvial lowland without sharply defined internal subdivisions, where climate and soils are not entirely homogeneous. The eastern part of the plain is wettest receiving 40 to 60 inches (1,000 to 1,500 mm) of annual rainfall. Precipitation decreases to the west; near the Pakistan border it is only 20 inches (500 mm) a year.

The deficiency of rain in the middle Ganga basin and in areas west of it in Punjab is met mostly by irri­gation canals and only partly by wells and tube wells. Considerable extremes of tem­perature exist with ranges increasing toward the west. Soils are fertile and deep almost everywhere, and generally two crops are raised. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the land is arable.

Almost all grain crops are grown: rice more to­wards the east and wheat toward the west. Legumes, cotton, and sugarcane are also important. In the west (Punjab and the mid-Ganga basin) winter rains from cy­clones help the growth of winter season (rabi) crops, principally wheat, sorghum, millets, sorghums and short staple cotton. It is here that the benefits of the Green Revolution have been most noticeable and crop yields have markedly improved.

Toward the east, in Bihar and West Bengal, rainfall is heavy (40-80 inches or 1,000-2,000 mm annually). Here, rice and jute become more important, although many other crops are also cultivated. Crop yields, in general, are low. The farmer has for centuries been working with primitive tools, on tiny holdings, and has remained in debt.

It is a land of poverty, disease, and hunger. It is also a very densely populated part of India, averaging 800 persons per sq. mile (310 persons per sq. km) increasing to over 2,000 per sq. mile (770 persons per sq. km) toward the Lower Ganga Basin, In­dia’s major port.

In the heart of the Indo-Gangetic plains lies the historic city of Delhi, which is the national capital of the country and claims a population approaching 10 mil­lion inhabitants for its metropolitan area. The city had strategic “gateway” location for invaders from the west, yet close to the Himalayas, the peninsular India, and Rajasthan desert. For centuries it remained the administrative center for large em­pires.

The British moved the capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, and built a planned city of New Delhi as an adjunct to old Delhi. Since partitioning of the sub­continent in 1947, it grew rapidly, spurred primarily by the economic stimulus pro­vided by the enterprising refugee population from areas that are now in Pakistan, and acquired commercial and in­dustrial functions in addition to its administrative role. Important industries located in its metropolitan area are: ma­chine tools, auto parts, plastic items, bicycles, and a variety of consumer goods.

Between Delhi and Kolkata are many other cities with populations ranging be­tween one-half to one million, including the ancient city of Varanasi (formerly Banaras), the holiest of Hindu cities, the industrial city of Kanpur, and the histori­cal and commercial cities of Allahabad, Lucknow and Patna.

West of Delhi in Punjab lies Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs, near the Pakistani border, the scene of recent confrontation between Indian government and Sikh separatists. Kolkata (population: 11 million) and the second largest city and port of India and is located in the Ganga Delta region. It owes its growth and importance to its easy accessi­bility to the production of a large hinterland of the Ganga Plain, jute cultiva­tion of Bengal, tea plantations of Assam, and heavy mining and industry of the close-by mineral belt. It is India’s major manufacturing center for jute textiles, met­al and chemical products, and paper.

The mineral resources of the region are slight, and are mostly located in the Damodar Valley, which contains India’s major coalfields and some manganese. Oil production in Assam in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam is now decreasing; it was never sufficient to meet India’s needs. However, the nearby Chota Nagpur Pla­teau, close to Kolkata’s industrial belt, is the most mineralized area (coal, iron ore, copper, mica) in the country.

To the southwest of the Northern Lowlands along Pakistan border lies the Great Indian Desert or Thar Desert. An area of scarce and unreliable rainfall, it was, before independence, ruled by several princely houses, and therefore contains several historic cities such as Ajmer, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, and Jodhpur. Jaipur, a planned city of 2.5 million inhabitants is the major administrative, cultural, and commercial center.

Central Highlands and Plateaus:

It is a physically and culturally transitional zone between Indo-Aryan North and Dravidian South in Central India, and is an upland region of highlands and plateaus east of the Aravalli Hills. Linguistic affili­ation to the Indo-European tongues is more pronounced. Bhopal, Gwalior, Nag­pur and Pune all are “millionaire” cities and were formerly seats of powerful princely houses.

The Deccan Peninsula:

The Deccan Peninsula occupies an area of roughly half a million sq. miles (1.3 million sq. km) and containing nearly 40 percent of India’s population. Most of pen­insular India lies south, of the Tropic of Cancer. It is a tableland Of old, hard rocks, rolling hills, and interior basins, flanked by mountains and coastal plains. The coastal plain along the Arabian Sea is narrow, rainy, and tropical.

Rising steeply above it are the mountainous Western Ghats, form­ing an escarpment of 3,000-5,000 feet (915-1,525 meters). The central part of the Deccan Plateau gradually dips eastward, declining in elevation from the Western Ghats to the coastal plains along the Bay of Bengal.

The peninsular rivers Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri flows east­wards across the peninsula through the Eastern Ghats and into the Bay of Bengal. Among major rivers only the Tapti and Narmada in the north flow in the Arabian Sea, following structural troughs. The east­ern coastal plain is much wider and drier than the western plains particularly near the delta of the Kaveri River where it is over 150 miles (240 km) wide.

The north­western portion of Deccan, covering an area of over 95,000 sq. miles (240,000 sq. km) is composed of thick black-colored ba­saltic lava flows known as the Black regur soils. This is a fertile tableland of rich soils with excellent texture for the retention of summer moisture for cultivation. Cotton, sorghum (jowar), linseed, and legumes are the principle crops.

Most of Deccan is in the “rain shadow” of the Western Ghats (which receive heavy rainfall from the moisture-laden, south­west summer monsoon winds). In this area annual rainfall ranges from 20-35 inches (500-875 millimeters), and falls mostly in summer. Irrigation from tanks and ponds is widespread. Only the southern section of the eastern coast gets winter rainfall from the northeast retreating monsoons which pick up moisture from the Bay of Bengal.

Rice is cultivated all along the east­ern coast in the river deltas, as well as on the west coast. In southern parts of the western coast (the Malabar) where rainfall is particularly heavy (above 80 inches or 2,000 millimeters annually) commercial crops of coconut, rubber, pepper and cashew nuts, are cultivated in addition to rice.

Major minerals are coal, iron ore (with very rich ore content), mica man­ganese, copper, chromite and bauxite. India’s main iron and steel centers: Bhilai, Raurkela, and Durgapur, make use of these minerals. In general, population den­sities are high in the coastal lowlands, reaching close to 1,500 persons per sq. mile (575 persons per sq. km).

Elsewhere these are much lower than the Indian average, ranging between 300-500 persons a sq. mile (110-180 persons per sq. km). The two large ports of Mumbai and Chennai, located on west and east coasts respectively, were de­veloped by the British as trading ports.

Bombay (now renamed Mumbai) is the largest Indian city with a population of nearly 12 million of its metropolitan area, has a natural harbor and is closest to the oil-producing Persian Gulf and the Bom­bay High offshore oilfield area in the Arabian Sea. It is a major manufacturing center producing textiles, chemicals, phar­maceuticals and consumer goods. Madras (now renamed Chennai) is India’s fourth largest city (pop. over 5 million), and has a large trading area in Southern Deccan.

It is a provincial capital, a port and an indus­trial and educational center. Ahmedabad (population: 3 million) to the north of Mumbai is another major textile manufac­turing center. Inland Bangalore (4.2 million) is noteworthy for its engineering, automobile, textile, machine tools, air­craft, pharmaceutical, and computer-based industries and is fast emerging as an exam­ple of modern industrial India, and rightly called the “Silicon” capital of the country.

Himalayan Highlands:

To the north of Ganga-Indus plains of northern India lie, the Himalaya mountains that extend from northern-northwestern part of Pakistan, to include most of the nations of Nepal and Bhutan, covering nearly 135,000 sq. miles (350,000 sq. km) of territory and are inhab­ited by some 20 million people.

Pakistan controls about one-fourth of the territory in the northern and western parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and disputes with India the latter’s control of the re­maining portions of the state. The structure and topography of the Himalaya are quite complex. In general, there are three parallel zones, known as the Outer, Lesser and Great Himalaya, each attaining higher altitudes successively inland from the plains.

The Outer ranges are closest to the plains and reach an altitude of 2,500 to 4,000 feet (760 to 1,200 meters), the Lesser Himalaya are in the middle and rise 7,000 to 15,000 feet (2,100 to 4,500 meters) eleva­tion; whereas the Great Himalayan ranges are the loftiest with an average crest of 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) and are the far­thest from the plains. Several others attain elevations of over 22,000 feet (6,600 me­ters). Tucked in the ranges are the alluvial valleys, of which the Vale of Kashmir, at an altitude of about 5,000 to 6,000 feet (1,520 meters), is a good example.

The Himalayas screen off India’s plains, and run for 1,500 miles (2,400 km) long and 150-250 miles (240-400 km) wide. They have acted throughout history as a physical and cultural barrier of tremen­dous proportions between India and China. Although the Chinese invasion of 1962 did dispel notions of the Himalayas’ invulnerability to some extent, the cli­matic and cultural isolation which this great mountain mass imposes on India can­not be ignored.

These mountains are so high and their ridges so unbroken that the cold dry winds of central Asia do not reach India nor do the warm, moisture-laden summer winds of South Asia cross over the mountains. Thus, north India’s climate is much milder in winter and much wetter in summer than it would be without these mountains.

Railroads from the Indian side penetrate only the foothills (exceptions are the railroads to Shimla, constructed by the British for the establishment of a “sum­mer” capital for the country and to Darjeeling, another eastern hill station). The few motor roads that do exist in the Himalayan interior were mostly con­structed since independence.

Climate regimes and vegetation in the Himalaya follow elevation and exposure. The vertical sequence is so sharp that within 100 miles/160 km) of the plains, from the lower slopes 2,000-3,000 feet in altitude (600-900 meters) to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) climates vary from humid subtropical, temperate or humid micro thermal to cold tundra.

This may be roughly compared to the climatic transi­tions from north India to the Arctic coast of Siberia. The south facing mountainsides are warmer and rainier. The Tibetan Pla­teau lying in the rainshadow of the Great Himalaya ranges remains dry.

Most people are settled in the Lesser Himalaya and the river valleys between the mountain ranges. Many live in isolated and remote valleys. Almost all the tillable area is cultivated by terracing. Among the agriculturally rich interior valleys is the Valley of Kashmir, where rice, fruits, vege­tables, and flowers are grown. Horticultural advances are also being made in Himachal Pradesh (one of India’s mountainous states).

Shimla is its capital city, and is a railhead; and the main collecting and distributing center for this produce. It is also one of the several summer resort towns in the Himalaya. Most summer re­sorts, known as hill stations, he between 5,000 and 8,000 feet (1,520-2,400 meters) al­titudes, and were built by the British to escape the fierce heat and humidity of the plains. Other well-known hill stations are Darjeeling, Nainital, Mussourie, and Srinagar (the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir).

Not all hill stations were es­tablished during British times. Thus, Srinagar in the Vale of Kashmir was a fa­vorite retreat of the Mughal emperors from the 15th to 18th centuries. Most hill stations inherited the paraphernalia left by the British—the old hotels, boarding schools, bungalows, race courses, polo fields, botanical gardens, and hiking trails. These now serve as the summer haunts of wealthy Indians and foreign diplomats.

Cultural Patterns:

The Indian subcon­tinent has acted as a cul-de-sac absorbing successive migratory waves of peoples. Consequently they got intermingled to such an extent that racially distinct divi­sions are hard to establish. Therefore, language, and religion rather than ethnic origin, are the primary cultural distinc­tions between peoples.

Although George Grierson (1851- 1941), a British authority, identified 723 main languages and dialects in the subcon­tinent, most of these were spoken by very few people in the late 20th century. The Indian government recognizes 17 regional languages. In 1981 Hindi, and related dia­lects claimed nearly 45 percent of population as speakers; Telugu, Bengali Marathi (with 7 to 8.5 percent speakers each); Tamil (6.6 percent speakers); Urdu (5.2 percent speakers); Gujarati (nearly 5 percent speakers); Kannada, Malayalam, and Oriya with 3 to 4 percent speakers each; and Assamese, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Sanskrit with less than 2-3 per­cent speakers each.

Sanskrit of the Indo-European family was spoken by less than 3,000 people (in 1981), although it is credited with the status of being the mother of most of the north Indian tongues. It is the language of ancient In­dian epics, religious thought and philosophy, and was accorded the status of one of the languages recognized in the Constitution.

The Mughal rule in India (16th to 19th centuries) promoted the use of a colloquial tongue, Hindustani, a hy­brid, although the official language was Persian. From it two literary languages Hindi (showing a strong Sanskrit influence and Urdu (with a Persianized vocabu­lary) emerged. Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi and Assamese are spoken in northern and central India, and belong to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

Telugu, Tamil, Kanuada, and Malayalam are distributed in southern India and be­long to the Dravidian family of languages. Of these, Tamil antedates the north Indian Indo-Aryan languages and possesses a rich cultural history. Besides these two lan­guage families are two other families, Austro-Asiatic family in the northeast parts of the country inhabited primarily by several tribal groups; and the Sino-Ti­betan family along the northern frontier region.

Hindi was declared the official lan­guage of the country at the time of independence, and English, not listed among the 18 official languages, was ac­corded a special status of an additional language (in 1950) initially for a period of 15 years, but later allowed to continue as a second language for the courts, the Parlia­ment and as a lingua faucal and a link language between the federal and state gov­ernments.

India is the birthplace of many religions and has been the home of many others. The strength of the major religions is: Hinduism (professed by 81.3 percent of the population); Islam (by 12 percent) of a predominately Sunni component, Christi­anity by 2.3 percent divided equally between Catholics forming nearly 1.5 per­cent and Protestants, Sikhism by 2 percent, Buddhism by 0.8 percent, Jainism by 0.4 percent, and a Zoroastrianism claiming a few thousand adherents.

Economic Activity:

India is a typically agricultural nation. Two-thirds of its labor- force is engaged in agriculture, but which counts for only one-third of the value of the country’s domestic product. The pro­portion of those engaged since the beginning of the 20th century, although the area under cultivation has steadily in­creased and now occupies more than half of the nation’s total area. In some parts of the Ganga Plain the proportion of culti­vated to total area often exceeds 90 percent.

The average farm size is small (five acres or two hectares) and due to in­creasing population pressure the size is declining despite several land reforms since independence. The introduction of several government-sponsored large-scale canal ir­rigation projects since independence (the canal irrigation projects had been pre­viously set up by the British in the mid-19th century, but were greatly ex­panded after independence during the late 1960s and early 1970s), and the introduc­tion of new hybrid, high-yielding varieties for wheat (and rice) which dramatically in­creased the production of food-grains to over 200 million metric tons in recent years, enough to meet the country’s cur­rent food-grain requirements.

Rice is the leading grain, in terms of both area under cultivation, and total yield. It is grown largely in areas of ample rainfall in the fertile Ganga Plain, and the coastal lowlands, as well as some irrigated lands. Wheat ranks next in both area, and total yield, and is grown mainly on the fer­tile soils of northern and northwestern India (Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh) in areas with 15 to 40 inches (375 to 1,000 mm) of average annual precipitation, often with irrigation.

Other grain crops (jowar or sorghum) millets and corn and pulses of several types, grown on relatively infertile soils and grown all over the coun­try. In addition, a variety of vegetables and fruits are grown in various areas. Crops like sugarcane, cotton, tea, and coffee are grown largely for export on plantations in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.

Foremost among the commercial, industrial crops is cotton, grown primarily in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Punjab. Af­ter independence the production of jute, formerly grown primarily in areas now in Bangladesh, has increased and grown mainly in West Bengal, Assam and Bihar. India has the largest bovine population of any country in the world, and livestock raising plays, an important part in the agri­cultural economy. Cattle and buffaloes are used primarily as draft animals, but also as sources of meat (for Muslims, Christians, and Schedule Castes beef eating is not a ta­boo), and as a source of fertilizer, and as cooking fuel (from dried cow-dung cakes). Cow slaughter is illegal in many states, and many orthodox Hindus are vegetarians.

Commercial forestry is not much devel­oped, and restricted primarily to the West Ghats, western Himalayas, and the hilly areas of central India. Fishing is practiced along the coastline, and on the rivers. Ma­rine fisheries, now increasingly becoming mechanized, account for two-thirds of pro­duction. Kerala is the leading fishing state. Fish products account for about 3 percent of India’s exports.

Mining plays an insignificant role in the economy. Close to 2 percent of the population is engaged in it, accounting for about 2.5 percent of the domestic product. Minerals are relatively important in the country’s manufacturing industry, as well as a source of modest export-revenue (pol­ished gems and jewelry formed nearly one-sixth of all exports in 1992-93).

Among minerals, petroleum leads in value, followed by coal. The production of petro­leum fulfills nearly half of the country’s requirements. Almost all of the petroleum is derived from offshore Bombay High, and from Gujarat and Assam. The most important coal fields are in the Damodar Valley in Bihar and West Bengal, which ac­count for about half of the nation’s output. Natural gas is of very little importance. Uranium in modest quantities is produced in Bihar. Iron-ore is an important mineral, mined in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Karnataka, and Orissa. Copper, manga­nese, mica, bauxite, zinc and lead are other minerals of some importance.

India’s manufacturing industry is highly diversified; engages nearly one- tenth of the country’s labor-force and accounts for about one-fifth the nation’s domestic product. A large number of peo­ple are working in millions of small-scale handicraft enterprises, such as spinning, weaving, pottery making, metalwork, and woodwork. In terms of total output and value added, however, mechanized large- scale industry predominates producing metals, machinery, fertilizers, heavy chemicals, and increasingly engaged in electrical and electronic products.

Given India’s large resource base, how­ever, the volume of foreign trade is small. There has been a chronic trade deficit in international trade. Among exports no particular item occupies a dominant posi­tion, although gems and jewelry (particularly for the Middle Eastern Mar­ket) have usually held the leading position, followed by ready-made garments, leather goods, agricultural products including plantation crops (such as tea), engineering products.

Imports include mineral fuels, transport equipment, industrial chemicals and fertilizers. Mineral fuels usually ac­count for one-fourth to one-fifth of all imports. The United States and the former Soviet Union have been the principal trad­ing partners, while Germany and the United Kingdom have also been important in India’s foreign trade.

India has a large railroad track of 39,000 miles (62,950 km). The rail system is the fourth largest in the world after Rus­sia, Japan, and China in terms of distance traveled each year by passengers. The length of the hard-surfaced road has in­creased nearly tenfold, from 66,000 miles (106,195 km in 1947) to over two million miles (3.5 million) since independence, but still represents half of the country’s total road track.

Prospects:

India celebrated its half cen­tury of independence on August 15, 1997. The architects of modern India created a democracy m one of the world’s poorest, most populous and socially the most frac­tured countries. The country contains over a billion people, a third of which fall below the poverty line, and more than half of the adults are illiterate. Its constitution recognizes 18 languages, but in fact there are 35 Indian languages each spoken by more than a million people. The society is divided by distinctions of religion, caste, and language, and prone to occasional vio­lence.

Although the country has made steady material progress since independence and made substantial gains in manufacturing and in increasing agricultural productivity to the extent of eliminating food-grain im­ports, population pressures continue to plague its development. It has been persua­sively argued by many keen observers that much of the developing world, especially Asia, has recorded much higher rate of de­velopment than India has during the last few decades.

India’s growth is currently be­low 6 percent a year, but was under 4 percent a year between 1960 and 1990 far below that of other Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea which averaged between 7 and 9 percent growth a year during the same period.

Population pressures, together with the burdensome foreign and economic policies, of course, constrained its eco­nomic development before 1990. Since the early 1990s, however, India has liberated itself from the stifling economic environ­ment and chosen to adopt a path of economic liberalization that promises a higher growth, and a more active involve­ment m world market, calculated to serve its economic and trading interests.

The adoption of foreign and economic policy also has begun to open up the rewarding relationship with the West. The country is now self-sufficient in agricultural produc­tion and considered to be the world’s tenth most industrialized nation. The social, demographic, economic and political pres­sures will understandably continue to affect its development, but the economic outlook appears modestly promising.

India’s large size, strategic location and democratic polity are likely to give it a prominent position in international affairs. Its growing industrial base, military strength and scientific and technical capac­ity add to its political stature.