Before we get going, I'll point you to the BBC's and The New York Times India profiles. Each will quickly get you up to speed on the country's major history and current events. Some highlights:
- Home to more than 1 billion people, India is the world's second most populous country and the largest democracy.
- Some 428 million voters — almost one and a half times the size of the entire U.S. population — reaffirmed their support for the ruling Indian National Congress in the country's parliamentary elections last spring.
- While well known as the birthplace of Buddhism, India is religiously and culturally diverse, a fact reflected by its federal political system.
- India won its independence from Britain in 1947. The sub-continent's ensuing partition into India and Pakistan sowed the seeds for ongoing tension between the two eventual nuclear powers.
- Two decades into economic reforms lifting barriers to foreign investment and entrepreneurship, India is home to a burgeoning middle class. It's the "I" in the BRIC acronym, coined by Goldman Sachs, used as shorthand for four of the world's top emerging economic powers (Brazil, Russia and China are the other three). Rural poverty is a persistent issue, however.
- India's Bollywood is the world's most prolific film industry.
— SCE
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