India

**India**, officially the **Republic of India**, is a country in South Asia and the most populous country in the world. It shares land borders with the UIR, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. India also shares close maritime borders with Sri Lanka, the Maldives and due to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indonesia and Thailand.

## History

### Post-Independence and Conflicts with Pakistan

In 1947, British India was granted independence from the British Empire, but was partitioned into two states; the Union of India, a secular state for Christians, Hindus and Sikhs; and the State of Pakistan, a Muslim country. British India was comprised of semi-independent princely states and those states were given the choice of joining India or Pakistan or remaining independent. Two states choose to retain independence; Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir. However, India forcefully annexed Hyderabad. Before Jammu and Kashmir could gain full independence, Pakistan invaded the region in an attempt to take control. Jammu and Kashmir quickly joined India in order to protect itself from Pakistan, resulting in the first war between India and Pakistan. A UN brokered cease-fire came into effect and the border between India and Pakistan was drawn at the Line of Control in Kashmir.

In October 1962, China launched two attacks against India, beginning the Sino-Indian War. The war ended with China in control of the territory it claimed and resulted in the Line of Actual Control becoming the three-way border between China, India and Pakistan. In 1985, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar to infiltrate Indian Kashmir. India retaliated with full-scale military attack on West Pakistan. The war ended 17 days later, after the largest tank battle since World War II. In 1971, India and Pakistan went back to war as East Pakistan declared independence as Bangladesh. India intervened to help Bangladesh secure its independence. In 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, becoming the world’s sixth or seventh nuclear armed state (possibly after Israel).

India and Pakistan fought another war in 1999, known as the Kargil War, in which Pakistani soldiers and Kashmir separatists took control the Indian Kargil district. The war ended in July 1999, with Indian victory.

### Early Twenty-First Century: 2000-2020

In 2008, 10 members of Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out a series of shootings and bombings in Mumbai over four days. The only suspect to be captured alive, later confessed under interrogation that the attacks had been conducted with the assistance of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. Pakistan denied claims of any Pakistani involvement, but later admitted that the terrorists were Pakistani.

In 2016, the Islamic State and Taliban began making gains in Pakistan, concerning its neighbours. On 9 January 2017, two Pakistani nuclear cruise missiles went missing after the convoy was hijacked by IS militants. India became increasingly worried for the potential collapse of Pakistan. **India** and the United States began talks about possible action in the event of Pakistani collapse. India was vocally critical of the American violation of Pakistani sovereignty in Operation Icarus. On 2 March 2018, India and Pakistan signed the Treaty of Srinagar, in which Pakistan conceded to draw the border between India and Pakistan at the Line of Control in Kashmir, effectively ending the conflict between the two. However, on 25 April, India violated the Treaty and invaded Pakistani Kashmir, capturing the region in the final Indo-Pakistani War.

In 11 June 2018, **India** and China agreed to end their border conflict under the auspices of Russian diplomats, and in July, they signed the Treaty of Kathmandu over the regulation of South Asian Rivers beginning in the Tibetan Plateau was signed between India and China.

### Rising Superpower: 2020-2050

**India** grew to become an economic, technological and military superpower on the scale of China and United States between 2020 and 2050. India's power grew parallel to its economic development over the same time period.

## Government and Politics

India is the world’s largest democracy and is a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system, governed under the Constitution of India. The federal government is divided into three branches:

* Executive: The President of India is the head of state and is elected indirectly by a national electoral college for a five-year term. The President is also Commander-In-Chief of India’s 1,325,000 man army. The Prime Minister of India is the head of government and exercise most executive power and is appointed by the President. By convention the prime minister is supported by the party or alliance holding the majority in parliament.
* Legislative: The Indian legislature is a bicameral parliament that operates under a Westminster-style system.

Councils of State is the upper house and consists of 245 members elected for staggered six-year terms indirectly by the state and territorial legislatures in numbers proportional to their share of the national population.
House of the People is the lower house comprising of 545 members, all but two, directly elected by popular vote, each representing an individual constituency for a five-year term.
* Judicial: India has an independent three-tier judiciary comprising of the Supreme Court, 24 High Courts and a large number of trial courts. The Supreme Court has the ability to declare law and strike down law which is contradictory to the constitution.

### Subdivisions

India is comprised of 29 states and 7 union territories. These states are; Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar. Chhattisgarhh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. The seven union territories are:

* Andaman and Nicobar Islands
* Chandigarh
* Dadra and Nagar Haveli
* Daman and Diu
* Lakshadweep
* National Capital Territory of Delhi.
* Puducherry

### Foreign Relations

**India** maintains a strong strategic relationship with Russia and strong economic ties with China. Russia is India's top defense supplier. India has also maintained wide-ranging defence agreements with Israel and France and is a member of the G8+5 and G-30 economic cooperation. India is not signatory to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India also has close ties to its neighbour the UIR in dealing with separatist and extremist groups. Australia is also a close economic and trade partner with India.

## Military

**India** has one of the largest armies in the world with 1.4 million active troops and another million reserves. The Indian Military is divided into the Indian Army, the Indian Navy, and the Indian Air Force.

**India** is an established nuclear power with over 100 active warheads and a full triad of bomber, ballistic missile and submarine launched nuclear weapons.

The Indian Navy has two aircraft carriers and an assortment of submarines.

India's top foreign suppliers are Russia, Israel, France and the United States.

Russia and **India** jointly developed the PAK-FA t-50 fifth generation stealth fighter in the 2010s.

Israel supplied the Indian Military with military drones until India fully developed its own domestic drone industry in the 2020s.

## Space Program

ISRO is the official space agency of **India**.

ISRO contracted satellite launches to American private firm Space-X in the early 21st century.

**India** was one of five nations to have independently launched astronauts into space by 2030. Indian spacemen and women were known as vyomanauts. Indian vyomanauts launched by ISRO visited the Chinese space station during the 2020s.

By the mid 2020s, ISRO had plans for an Indian manned lunar mission and lunar base by 2032. ISRO had even more ambitious plans to participate in a joint international manned Mars mission and the construction of an international Martian base alongside the Europe, the China and Russia by 2036.

## Economy

**India** had one of the fastest growing economies of the early 21st century and was expected to be the second largest economy in the world behind China by 2050 or 2060, overtaking the United States in GDP.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused on helping his country reach its growth potential by fighting corruption and encouraging both domestic and foreign investment in energy, transportation infrastructure, education and industry. He wanted to see **India** eventually become a developed nation and Indian GDP growth surpassed that of China under his watch. Indian participation in the New Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank helped fund many new projects.

China was also one of India's chief foreign investors and helped Delhi modernize India's railway network and build the first Indian HSR line between the Indian national capital and its financial capital Mumbai in 2020. China Railways linked India to the larger Pan-Asian High Speed Rail System through the completion of Roof of the World HSR Line between Beijing and Delhi in 2024 and completion of the Kunming-Kolkata HSR Line in 2026. These projects drastically increased bilateral trade and investment between **India** and the rest of Eurasia. **India** became a crucial link in China's New Silk Road Project that China hoped would create a Eurasia wide transportation and trade network. The Chinese built HSR network ironically also increased Indian influence in South East Asia due to increased travel and trade by land while Chinese investment in Indian ports did the same for sea trade.

CR further expanded India's HSR over the course of the early to mid 21st century, helping complete a HSR ring linking **India**'s five most important cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangaluru and Chennai by 2032. By 2042, HSR lines stretching across the interior of **India** had turned the HSR ring into a HSR pentagram linking most of India's major cities via HSR passenger and freight travel and accelerating India's development. By the 2040s, many of India's newest HSR lines were even faster maglev trains.

Both Russia and China invested heavily in the Indian nuclear power industry helping Delhi triple India's nuclear generating capacity between 2015 and 2030. China took a particular interest in both helping **India** develop thorium power and gaining access to India's abundant thorium reserves after completing the world's first thorium plant in Shanghai in 2019.

After air pollution became unbearable in Delhi and many other large Indian cities in the 2010s, India increased its use of natural gas to gradually wean off dirty coal. The United Islamic Republic fueled Indian natural gas power plants through pipelines stretching across Central Asia. Liquified natural gas tankers from the Persian Gulf region and the United States also fueled India's growing energy needs through LNG processing facilities and power plants in Indian ports. Russia and China even helped fuel India's seemingly insatiable energy needs through gas pipelines stretching from Siberia and shale gas fields in western China over the Tibetan Plateau.

By the mid 2030s, **India** imported clean solar power from the UIR regions of Oman and Baluchistan via HVDC cables stretching under the Arabian Sea.

**India** also initiated a massive expansion of its own renewable sector as part of a gradual transition towards a post-fossil fuel economy alongside other major industrial powers. Indian energy and industrial giant Reliance Group became a major player in the renewables industry opening up a major tidal and wind farm off the coast of Chennai in 2026 and later spreading this technology throughout India and exporting this technology to other developing economies. Reliance Industries also built solar power farms in the Thar Desert in the Indian state of Gujarat and other sunny regions of the Indian subcontinent.

**India** constructed hydrogen fueling stations during the 2030s in coordination with China and the other nations of South Asia and South East Asia as part of a global transition towards a hydrogen economy by the world's major industrialized nations.

Reliance Group expanded ultra high speed wifi and Internet services to India's middle class and even India's poor. Meanwhile, Tata Industries helped bring affordable electric and hydrogen powered cars to the Indian masses in the 2020s, 2030s and 2040s. As in other industrial nations, most domestically produced and imported cars had an autonomous driving option by the mid to late 2030s as the evolution of the internet and automation continued to transform the way people lived.

Although **India** was plagued by huge income inequality, it had the world's second largest middle class after China by 2050. The growth of India's middle class in the first half of the 21st century was nothing short of a miracle in the annals of human history. India was arguably a developed nation and certainly a high tech nation by the mid-21st century.