Political administration of India

India is a democracy. Before its independence its future leaders chose the liberal democratic system as the administration system of India. On 26/01/1950, India declared itself as Republic. On this day the Constitution of India came into force. Today India is a federation of 28 states and 7 union territories and formally this federation is known as a Union.

Nominally the head of the country is the President in whom all executive powers are vested, but the real administrator of the country is the Prime Minister. After the national elections are held the President calls the most suitable candidate to form a government, known as the central government. Normally this candidate is the head of the largest party in the parliament. In case the government resigns because of any reason, the President can call the other candidate to form the government. The President can also declare, according to government advice, on new elections and if necessary an emergency state. The President has the right to be updated about crucial government matters and other rights like giving amnesty to prisoners etc. According to the Constitution, elections are to be held once in every five years, unless the parliament dissolves earlier or on the other hand, emergency is declared and in such a case parliament can continue another year.

The Indian Parliament consists of two houses. The Lower House called the Lok Sabha and the Upper House called the Rajya Sabha. In the national elections candidates are chosen for the Lower House. The candidates are elected in territorial constituencies. There are 543 territorial constituencies. Two members from the Anglo-Indian community are nominated to the Lower House by the President. The law, which obliges Government office to reserve 15% from the Scheduled Castes and 7% from the Scheduled Tribes, also exists in the Parliament. At least 22% of the Indian Parliament members belong to these two communities . In the past few years there is an attempt to oblige a law to allow about 33% women as Parliament members.

The Upper House, Rajya Sabha, consists of up to 250 members. Of these members 230 are elected by state legislatures and about 15 are nominated by the President. Unlike the Lower House, the Upper House cannot be dissolved, but one third of its members resign every two years.

Most of the parliamentary activities, passing laws, no-confidence votes, budget bills, take place in the Lower House. The Upper House together with the Lower House amends the Constitution. These two Houses together with the state legislatures also elect the President.

The states have their own legislatures. Some states have two Houses and some only one House. The Lower House where most of the legislature activities happen is called the Vidhan Sabha. The state elections are held every five years unless the state government is dissolved earlier. In these elections members for the Lower House are elected.

Head of a state is called Chief Minister, who is member of the Lower House. Constitutionally the figurehead of the state is the Governor, who is appointed by the President according to the advice of the national government. After the state elections the governor calls for the suitable candidate to form the government. In general the governor has more legislative rights at state level than the President has at national level. The governor can call on early elections in the state, or fire the government if he thinks that the government has failed or is unstable.

In the federal relations between the state and central government, the central government has more authority on state matters than the state government. For example the central government has the right to redistribute the state borders without consulting the state governments on this matter. If the political conditions in any state are not stable, the national government can call on the President to declare President's rule in that specific state. And so the government in that state is dissolved, which means an emergency rule is declared and sometimes if necessary the army is put to work in that state.

Even though the Constitution determinates the rights of the different authorities in the administration process, there can be other pressures like strong lobbies or strong political parties, which, sometimes determinate the real administration process. Sometimes the authority implemented by the President is questioned by the government or by political parties as deviation from his constitutional rights as the nominal head of the Union.

Education in India

Every ten years the literate population of India goes up by about 10%. During its independence, there were only 12% literate Indians, according to the 1991 census there are 52% literate Indians, meaning that over half a billion people are literate. Education is monitored in India by state governments and this finds its expression in different figures for different states. Kerala in south India, with a population of 30 million, has the highest literacy rate in India of about 90%. Rajasthan in north India, with a population of 45 million, has the lowest literacy rate of about 40%. 

Literacy rate among the urban population is higher than among the villagers. It is also higher among the men than among the women. In some states the gap between literate men and literate women is very salient. For example, in Rajastan and Bihar, the gap is about 30%, while in Kerala and Mizoram it is about 7%. Literacy rate among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes  is lower than in the general population. Among the Scheduled Tribes it is the lowest because many tribes still prefer to stay away from the main stream population. But since independence the literacy rate among the women and the lower castes has grown up at a much higher rate than among the general population. 

The state governments allow free education at primary level. But, not all Indians get the opportunity to go to school. Schools are funded from different sources like government, local bodies and private funds. The smaller the funds the less the students receive. School institutions range from schools without any building to schools with all the hi-tech facilities and even sites on the internet. 

According to researches made in the 1980s about one-third of Indians study or studied in schools, which have English as medium of instruction. This number has gone up in the 1990s. For these people, English is in many senses their first language and it is easier for them to read, write and even communicate in English than in their own Indian languages. This makes India the second largest English speaking country in the world after USA.

At the time of independence in 1947 there were 19 universities in India. In 1997 there were 219 universities or institutions at university levels. The larger universities have many colleges affiliated to them. The language of instruction at the better rated colleges is English. Among the universities, some universities are considered as high standard good level universities. In 1995 there were over 5 million students in Indian universities. In general, less then 3% of India's population has academic education, which is very low compared to world standard. But numerically India has almost 24 million university graduates. India is also among the few countries in the world to launch satellite and has proven its nuclear capability. Because of this high number of academicians and their good knowledge of English, many technology companies (especially in the computer field) from around the world have arrived in India.

Cities of India

About a quarter of India's population is urban. Numerically that is about the whole population of USA. At least 23 Indian cities have over million residents. Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai are the four main cities of India. The first three cities have over 10 million residents each.

 

Delhi is actually comprised of two cities, Old Delhi and New Delhi, which is the capital of India. Delhi has a large number of historical monuments and is probably the city with the largest number of historical monuments in the world. Calcutta was considered in the past as the center of Indian culture and intellectuals. Some of the famous modern India philosophers, like Swami Vivekananda, were centered in Calcutta. Today Calcutta is seen as the most polluted and poverty stricken city of India. Calcutta was also the most populated city of India. In the early 1990s Mumbai became the most populated city of India and is in many fields the center of India. 

The first impression a foreigner gets of Mumbai is poverty. But Mumbai for Indians is like New York and Los Angles together. Mumbai was always the commercial, financial and entertainment center of India. Of the 23 stock exchanges in India, the stock exchanges of Mumbai are the most important. India produces the largest number of movies in the world. Until the mid-90s it had over 800 movies a year. In this field Bollywood(like Hollywood) in Mumbai is the entertainment center, even though some other cities of India, like Chennai in south India produces more movies than Mumbai.

 

In the last few years Hyderabad, capital of Andra Pradesh, is competing with Chennai as the movie center of India. Hyderabad is also competing with Bangalore as the 'silicon valley' of India. Bangalore is considered today as the technology center of India. Most of the high technology companies that operate in India are centered in Bangalore. Bangalore is called 'garden city'. It is very clean compared to other Indian cities. It is also seen as the most westernized city in India because of the pubs and western style shopping centers.

Most of the larger cities listed below are industrial centers of India. Cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Banglore, Ahmedabad and Bhopal are filled with mills and factories. Agra and Jaipur also have industries, but their main attraction is tourism. Madurai and Varanasi are important pilgrimage centers for Hindus.

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Cities with a population of over a million

	City	State
01	Mumbai	Maharastra
02	Calcutta	West Bengal
03	Delhi	Delhi
04	Chennai	Tamil Nadu
05	Hyderabad	Andra Pradesh
06	Bangalore	Karnataka
07	Ahmedabad	Gujarat
08	Pune	Maharashtra
09	Kanpur	Uttar Pradesh
10	Lucknow	Uttar Pradesh
11	Nagpur	Maharashtra
12	Surat	Gujarat
13	Jaipur	Rajasthan
14	Vadodara	Gujarat
15	Indore	Madya Pradesh
16	Patna	Bihar
17	Madurai	Tamil Nadu
18	Bhopal	Madya Pradesh
19	Ludhiana	Punjab
20	Coimbatore	Tamil Nadu
21	Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh
22	Vishakhapatnam	Andra Pradesh
23	Agra	Uttar Pradesh

Changing names of Indian places

The modern European forces began arriving in India since 1498. The Portuguese arrived first and later on the English arrived in 1600. Indians speak different languages and their general accents are different from that of the Europeans. The Europeans had some difficulties pronouncing Indian names and they renamed some Indians places so that it was easy for them to pronounce.

In the present wave of nationalism, many Indians places were officially renamed back to their original names or were given new names. But the former names are still used by the general public and sometimes the places are still recognized by their former names rather than by their new official names.

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Former and present names of Indian places

Former name	Present official name
Alleppey	Alappuzha
Broach	Bharuch
Madras	Chennai
Cape Comorin	Kanyakumari
Cochin	Kochi
Cranganore	Kodungallur
Calcutta	Kolkata
Quillon	Kollam
Calicut	Kozhikode
Mamallapuram	Mahabalipuram
Bombay	Mumbai
New Bombay	Navi Mumbai
Panjim	Panaji
Aurangabad	Sambhajinagar
Tellicherry	Thalasseri
Tanjore	Thanjavur
Trivandrum	Thiruvananthapuram
Trichur	Thrissur
Trichy	Tiruchirappalli
Ooty	Udhagamandalam
Baroda	Vadodara

Indian Nationalism and the Gandhi murders

Nationalist assassinated three important leaders in post-independent India by the surname Gandhi. The first was Mahatma Gandhi who was assassinated in 1948. The second was Indira Gandhi (no family relations to Mahatma Gandhi) who was assassinated in 1984. And the third was her son, Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991. Of the three Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated because of Indian nationalism, the other two were assassinated because of regional nationalism.

During India's independence period there were organizations in India who wanted to establish on the whole of British India a Hindu state. These organizations opposed to the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. After the partition of India these organizations blamed the Indian National Congress and especially its spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi as responsible for the partition. They saw in Gandhi a traitor. Mahatma Gandhi also took some steps that made him in the minds of Hindu nationalists, pro-Muslim and Pakistan. Because of these reasons a group of Hindu nationalist assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. 

Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India in the early 1980s. During her term, there was a demand by the Sikhs for an independent Sikh state in Punjab. These demanders used terror to pressure the Indian government and the leaders of this group found refuge in the holiest Sikh shrine, 'Golden Temple' in Amritsar. These leaders believed that the Indian government would not dare send an army to a holiest place of Sikhs, because of the social consequences this might cause and also because many Indian soldiers belong religiously to the Sikh religion. But Indira Gandhi dare send the army to the holiest Sikh shrine and caused lot of death and destruction, which she ordered soon to rebuild. A few months later in 1984 her Sikh bodyguards shoot her to death.

Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as India's Prime Minister right after his mother's assassination. His assassination was connected to the problems which existed in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the Tamils who emigrated from India to Sri Lanka demanded a separate Tamil state in north Sri Lanka. In this warfare between the two sides, Rajiv Gandhi was pressured by Tamilians in India and outside India to intervene. Rajiv Gandhi suggested diplomatic help to the Sri Lankan government, but they refused it, and so Rajiv sent the Indian navy to Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankans who did not have big navy like India agreed to the Indian army to negotiate with the Tamil rebellions in Sri Lanka. The Tamils at first accepted the Indian army with open hands, but slowly a warfare began between the Indian army and the Tamil rebellions in which many Tamilis died. In 1991 during an election campaign, Rajiv Gandhi, then in opposition, arrived in Tamil Nadu. In one of his rallies a suicide bomber exploded near him and killed him.

List of States and Union Territories

India is a Union of 28 States and 7 Union Territories. Each state has its own government with a Governor as the figurehead, while each Union Territory is administered directly by the President through an administrator appointed by him

STATE	CAPITAL
Andra Pradesh	Hyderabad
Arunachal Pradesh	Itangar
Assam	Dispur
Bihar	Patna
Chhattisgarh	Raipur
Goa	Panaji
Gujarat	Gandhinagar
Haryana	Chandigarh
Himachal Pradesh	Shimla
Jammu and Kashmir	Srinagar and Jammu
Jharkhand	Ranchi
Karnataka	Bangalore
Kerala	Thiruvananthapuram
Madya Pradesh	Bhopal
Maharashtra	Mumbai
Manipur	Imphal
Meghalaya	Shillong
Mizoram	Aizawi
Nagaland	Kohima
Orissa	Bhubaneshwar
Punjab	Chandigarh
Rajasthan	Jaipur
Sikkim	Gangtok
Tamil Nadu	Chennai
Tripura	Agartala
Uttaranchal	Dehradun
Uttar Pradesh	Lucknow
West Bengal	Kolkata
Union Territories		Capital
Andaman and Nicobar Islands		Port Blair
Chandigarh		Chandigarh
Dadar and Nagar Haveli		Silvassa
Daman and Diu		Daman
Delhi		Delhi
Lakshadeep		Kavaratti
Pondicherry		Pondicherry

THE INTERNAL MAP OF INDIA

After the partition of British India into India and Pakistan, there were in India 9 provinces and about 460 princely states. Most of the princely states within the Indian territory consented to join India. Some joined India under their own initiative and others were convinced by Sardar Villabbhai Patel (a very senior member of the Indian Congress) to join India. Patel who hold negotiations with the princely states, came to an agreement with the princely state rulers that they would continue getting monthly allowances as they were given to them by the British. And so began the designing of the internal map of India.

The big princely states of Mysore, Hyderabad and Kashmir remained in their original sizes and became new Indian states. To the big provinces like Bombay, Orissa and Bengal, small princely states around them were joined and these provinces also became new India's states. In north India some clinging princely states were joined together to create a new state. Rajastan was created in this way. Along with the states which the government created, there were also regions in India which for different reasons were subjected directly to the central government and were called union territories. For example Himachal Pradesh in north India was created by adjoining some princely states. It was a union territory.

Indian leaders and politicians who had different linguistic and cultural backgrounds demanded that the Indian states should be based on linguistic and cultural boundaries. The central government leaders, which belonged to the Congress party, opposed this idea. They feared that this could eventually lead towards separation of different Indian societies from India and would break the unity. But after a few years opposition the central government agreed to create Indian states based on linguistic differences.

The first step in this direction was made in 1953 when Andra Pradesh, in south India, was created for the Telegu speakers. In 1956 began the first organized process of creating Indian states based on linguistic differences. Among the states created that year were, Andra Pradesh which was created by adjoining certain parts of Telegu speaking areas from former Madras province and most of Hyderabad. For speakers of Malyalam, the state of Kerala was created. For Kanadda speakers the state of Mysore was created (which later on changed its name to Karnataka) from the former Mysore state and also from Kanadda speaking regions in Bombay, Madras and Hyderabad states. Along with states created based on linguistic boundaries, some other big states were created by joining small nearby states. For example Madya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajastan.

The central Indian government did not accept demands of all different cultural leaders for an autonomous Indian state. For example, the Sikhs wanted an autonomous Punjabi state which would have a Sikh majority with its official language, Punjabi. The central government did not accept this demand, instead created in 1956 the state of Punjab, which included also Hindi speakers in its territory and did not have a Sikh majority. But the Sikhs did not give up and continued demanding the Punjab state and in 1966, Punjab was parted into three new states. One of three states remained with the name Punjab and most of the Sikh population of India lived within its territory, but they were not the complete majority of that state. Another demand the central government did not accept was of the Maithali speakers, in present day Bihar, who also demanded a separate autonomous state for Maithali speakers.

Maharashtra for Marathi speakers and Gujarat for Gujarati speakers were created in 1960. Gujarat was created on northern part of the former Bombay state and Maharashtra was created from southern Bombay state and were joined to it parts of Madya Pradesh and Hyderabad. This process erased from India's map the state of Hyderabad, which was now distributed within three different states. Not all Gujaratis were enthused by the creation of new Gujarati state because this division meant that they had to give up the city of Bombay to the Maharashtrians.

Later on other states were created. In east India the state of Assam was parted a few times to create some new states. In 1963, Nagaland was created. In 1972, Manipur was created and there were others small states created from parts of Assam. In west India, Goa was established as a state in 1987. Before their establishment as states, Goa; Manipur and Nagaland were union territories. In the states that exist in India today, there are demands by other communities of India to create new autonomous states for their communities.

These demands for new states in India rise and fall according to the political power of the demanders. To point out such demands, which exist or existed, one can point out the demand of Jammu residents for an autonomous Jammu state in present day Kashmir. The Buddhist of Ladakh in Kashmir also demand autonomous state. In Bihar there was a demand for a separate Maithali state for Maithali speakers. In west Bengal, the Gurkha demands an autonomous Gurkhaland in north Bengal. Along the borders of Orissa and Bihar some tribal communities demanded to create Jharkhand. Similar demands of the aboriginal tribes of India exist in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Andra Pradesh. 

In the year 2000, three new states were established in India. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttaranchal. Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were created from parts of Bihar and Orissa. And Uttaranchal was created from north Uttar Pradesh.

Besides with these demands for autonomous states within Indian union, there were and are also separation demands from India.