India
India , officially the Republic of India ( Bhārat Gaṇarājya ), [18] [19] [c] is a country in South Asia . It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people , and the most populous democracy in the world. India is a federal constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system consisting of 29 states and 7 union territories . A pluralistic , multilingual , and multi-ethnic society, the country is also home to a diversity of wild life in a variety of protected habitats . Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; [d] China , Nepal , and Bhutan to the north-east; and Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives ; in addition, India's Andaman an