It has developed the capacity to strike at China and arch-rival Pakistan with its own missiles, and has carried out a programme of nuclear tests in defiance of world opinion. However, India is still struggling with huge social, economic and environmental problems.

OVERVIEW

 The vast and diverse Indian sub-continent - stretching from the mountainous Afghan frontier across to the jungles of Burma - was subject to foreign rule from the early 1800s until the demise of the British Raj in 1947.

 But the subsequent partition of the sub-continent sowed the seeds for future conflict with three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947.

Communal, caste and regional tensions continue to haunt Indian politics, sometimes threatening its long-standing democratic and secular ethos.

In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards after ordering troops to flush out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

And in 1992, widespread Hindu-Muslim violence erupted after Hindu extremists demolished the Babri mosque at Ayodhya.

Independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, dreamed of a socialist society and created a vast public infrastructure, much of which became a burden on the state. In the late 1980s and 1990s, India began to open up to the outside world, encouraging economic reform and foreign investment.

The country now has a burgeoning middle class and has made great strides in fields like information technology - exporting its talented professionals abroad. India launches its own satellites and plans to send a spacecraft to the moon.

 It also boasts one of the world's biggest film industries, based in the huge commercial metropolis of Mumbai (Bombay).

But the vast mass of the rural population remains illiterate and impoverished.

 Their lives continue to be dominated by the ancient Hindu caste system, which assigns each person a fixed place in the social hierarchy.

FACTS

• Population: 1.1 billion (UN, 2005)
• Capital: New Delhi
• Area: 3.1 million sq km (1.2 million sq miles), excluding Indian-administered Kashmir (100,569 sq km/38,830 sq miles)
• Major languages: Hindi, English and 17 other official languages
• Major religions: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism
• Life expectancy: 63 years (men), 65 years (women) (UN)
• Monetary unit: 1 Indian Rupee = 100 paise
• Main exports: Agricultural products, textile goods, gems and jewellery, software services and technology, engineering goods, chemicals, leather products
• GNI per capita: US $530 (World Bank, 2003)
• Internet domain: .in
• International dialling code: +91

LEADERS

President: APJ Abdul Kalam

Prime minister: Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh was appointed prime minister in May 2004 after the Congress Party's unexpected success in general elections.

 Manmohan Singh took office after Sonia Gandhi turned down the job The party's president, Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, shocked her supporters by declining the top post, apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks over her Italian birth. She said she had never wanted to be prime minister.

 The stock market, which went into a tailspin as investors feared that the return of Congress would derail economic reforms, rallied when Mr Singh was chosen as prime minister.

 He established his reputation as a finance minister in the early 1990s, under the Narasimha Rao government. He is credited with being the driving force behind the liberalisation of the economy. The reforms helped to ease the financial crisis that held sway as he took office.

 When the Congress Party was voted out of office, Mr Singh became opposition leader in the upper house.

 Mr Singh has said the main tasks of his premiership are to reduce poverty and to continue economic reforms. He has also stated his desire for friendly relations with India's neighbours, especially Pakistan.

 A Sikh born in West Punjab, Mr Singh is a former International Monetary Fund official and governor of India's Central Bank. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge.

• Foreign minister: Natwar Singh
• Finance minister: Palaniappan Chidambaram
• Defence minister: Pranab Mukherjee

MEDIA

Broadcasting in India has flourished since state TV's monopoly was broken in 1992, and the number of stations and channels is still growing.

Cable and satellite TV stations command large audiences for their multichannel offerings. STAR Plus - owned by the global media giant News Corporation - is one of the most popular non-state channels. Its version of the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?" proved to be one of the channel's biggest draws.

 News programmes attract large audiences and often outperform entertainment shows. Channels dedicated to 24-hour news are up and running and more are planned. India's dynamic national film industry supplies material to many broadcasters.

Doordarshan, the public TV service, operates 21 services including its flagship DD1 channel, which reaches some 400 million viewers.

Two multichannel, direct-to-home (DTH) operations - subscription-based Dish TV and a free-to-air offering from Doordarshan - are recent arrivals on the TV scene.

Private radio is a relative newcomer. Since they were sanctioned in 2000, music-based FM stations have proliferated in India's cities. But only public All India Radio (AIR) is permitted to broadcast news on the radio. In late 2002 the government gave the go-ahead to educational institutions to set up their own low-power FM stations.

 India's private press is independent and active. The Official Secrets Act has sometimes been used against journalists. In 2002 a Kashmir Times reporter was jailed under the act for several months before the case against him was withdrawn.

 A Freedom of Information Act, approved in 2002, proposed to give citizens the right to access some state information.

 India and neighbouring Pakistan regularly engage in a war of words via their respective media, occasionally banning relays of broadcasts from the other country.

India is expected to have 25 million internet users by 2005, up from 5.5 million at the beginning of 2001.

The press

•  Deccan Herald - Bangalore-based daily
• The Hindu - Madras-based daily
• The Hindustan Times - New Delhi-based daily
• The Pioneer - New Delhi-based daily
• The Indian Express - New Delhi-based daily
• The Statesman - Calcutta-based daily
• The Times of India - Mumbai-based daily
• India Today - New Delhi-based news magazine
• Outlook - New Delhi-based news magazine

Television

• Doordarshan Television - public TV; operates some 21 national, regional or local services
• Zee TV - satellite, cable TV services operated by Zee Group
• STAR TV - operates satellite, cable TV services, owned by News Corporation
• Sony Entertainment TV - commercial channel
• Aaj Tak - 24-hour news channel
• New Delhi TV (NDTV) - operates NDTV-India and NDTV 24x7 news channels
• Sun Network - commercial multi-channel broadcaster

Radio

• All India Radio - public radio
• All India Radio External Service - broadcasts in local and regional languages as well as in Arabic and English
• Radio Mirchi - commercial network, stations in Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, mainly music, operated by The Times Group
• Radio City - commercial, FM stations in Mumbai and other cities, owned by News Corporation

News agency

Press Trust of India