1. Politics of India
Benedict (Viktor) Gombocz

2. Geography of India
• Location: Southern Asia, bordering the Arabian
Sea and the Bay of Bengal, between Myanmar
and Pakistan
• Area:
▫ Total: 3,287,263 sq km
▫ Country comparison to the world: 7
▫ Land: 2,973,193 sq km
▫ Water: 314,070 sq km
• Area – comparative: Slightly more than one-
third the size of the U.S.
• Land boundaries:
▫ Total: 14,103 km
▫ Border countries: Bangladesh 4,053 km,
Bhutan 605 km, Burma 1,463 km, China 3,380
km, Nepal 1,690 km, Pakistan 2,912 km
• Coastline: 7,000 km

3. Physical Map of India

4. Government of India
• Capital: New Delhi
▫ Largest city: Mumbai (in both population and
area)
• Official languages: Hindi, English (Hindi in the
Devanagari script is the Union’s official language.
English is an extra co-official language for
Government work.)
• Demonym: Indian
• Government: Federal parliamentary
constitutional republic
• President: Pranab Mukherjee
• Vice President: Mohammad Hamid Ansari
• Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh (INC)
• Speaker of the House: Meira Kumar (INC)
• Chief Justice: Altamas Kabir (INC)
• Legislature: Parliament of India
• Upper house: Rajya Sabha
• Lower house: Lok Sabha

5. Pranab Mukherjee
• Born in Mirati, Bengal Presidency (now West Bengal,
India) on 11 December 1935.
• 13th and current President of India, in office since 25
July 2012.
• Was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and
held numerous ministerial portfolios in the Government
of India, in a political career extending over six decades.
• Was Union Finance Minister from 2009-2012, and the
Congress party’s top troubleshooter, before his election
as President.
• Got his break in political life in 1969 when PM Indira
Gandhi helped secure his election to the Rajya Sabha,
the upper house of Parliament, on a Congress ticket.
• After a meteoric rise, he became one of Indira Gandhi’s
most trusted lieutenants, and as a minister in 1973.
• Was charged with (like numerous other Congress
leaders) with committing gross excess es during the
controversial Internal Emergency of 1975-1977.
• His service in various ministerial capacities led to his
first stint as finance minister in 1982-1984.
• Additionally served as Leader of the House in the Rajya
Sabha from 1980-1985.

6. Mohammad Hamid Ansari
• Born in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency (now
Kolkata, West Bengal) on 1 April 1937.
• 14th and current VP of India, in office since 11
August 2007.
• Is, after Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the only
individual to be elected for the position of VP of
India for two consecutive terms.
• Also the current President of the Indian Institute of
Public Administration and Chancellor of Panjab
University, Chandigarh.
• Worked as a diplomat and served as Vice-
Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University from
2000-2002; was later Chairman of the National
Commission for Minorities from 2006-2007.
• Was elected as VP of India on 10 August 2007; was
sworn in the following day.
• Was re-elected on 7 August 2012 and was sworn in
by Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India; the
oath taking ceremony took place at Rashtrapati
Bhavan on 11 August 2012.

7. Manmohan Singh
• Born in Gah, Punjab, on 26 September 1932.
• 13th and current PM of India; assumed office on 22 May 2004.
• Celebrated economist; only PM since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to
power after finishing a full five-year term, and also the first Sikh to
occupy the post.
• His family migrated to India during its partition and subsequent
independence in 1947.
• Worked for the United Nations from 1966-1969 after earning his
doctorate in economics from Oxford.
• Later started his ceremonial career when Lalit Narayan Mishra
employed him as an assistant in the Ministry of Trade.
• Held numerous important positions in the Government of India,
during the 70s and 80s.
• In 1991, when India underwent a harsh economic crisis, recently
elected PM P.V. Narasimha Rao unexpectedly brought the apolitical
Singh into his cabinet as Finance Minister; throughout the next few
years, in spite of strong opposition, he as Finance Minister
conducted numerous structural changes that liberalised the Indian
economy.
• Whereas these standards were successful in stopping the crisis, and
increased his standing internationally as a leading reform-minded
economist, the incumbent Indian National Congress did poorly in
the 1996 general election.
• Later served as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (the
upper house of the Indian parliament) during Atal Bihari’s
government, 1998-2004.

8. Meira Kumar
• Born in Sasaram (now Bihar) on 31 March 1945.
• Five-time MP.
• Was elected unopposed as the first woman Speaker
of Lok Sabha on 3 June 2009.
• Lawyer and ex-diplomat.
• Was elected to the 8th, 11th, 12th, and 14th Lok Sabha,
in which she remained Cabinet Minister of Social
Justice and Empowerment (2004-2009), before
being a member of the 15th Lok Sabha.
• Was born in the Patna district in Bihar to the ex-
Deputy PM and important leader Babu Jagjivan
Ram and a freedom fighter, Indrani Devi.
• Attended Welham Girls School, Dehradun and
Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School, Jaipur.
• Did her MA and LLB at Indraprastha College and
Miranda House, Delhi University.

9. Altamas Kabir
• Born in Kolkata on 19 July 1948.
• 39th and current Chief Justice of India; assumed office
on 29 September 2012.
• Was born in a Bengali Muslim family.
• Studied law at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata.
• His father, Jehangir Kabir, was a leading Congress
politican and trade union leader from West Bengal who
was a Minister in the B.C. Roy and P.C. Sen
ministries, and also went on to be a minister in the first
non-Congress government in West Bengal in 1967, with
Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee as the Chief Justice of West
Bengal.
• Studied in the renowned Mount Hermon
School, Darjeeling, and Calcutta Boys’ School of
Calcutta.
• Amazed by one of his argumentative articles on social
matters and their answers, an instructor at Calcutta
Boys’ School recommended that he follow a career in
law.
• Studied law after graduating in history from Presidency
College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta.

10. Indian National Congress
• One of India’s two main political parties; the other is the
Bharatiya Janata Party.
• Biggest and one of the oldest democratically-functioning
political parties in the world.
• Its modern liberal platform is mainly seen as left-wing in
India’s political spectrum, in contrast to the right-wing socio-
religious ultra-nationalist-based Bharatiya Janata Party.
• Founded in 1885 by members of the occultist movement
Theosophical Society (Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai
Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee,
Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev
Govind Ranade, and William Wedderburn); became a central
member in the Indian Independence Movement, with more
than 15 million members and more than 70 million
participants in the fight against British colonial rule in India.
• Became the country’s governing party after India gained
independence in 1947, and was led chiefly by the Nehru-Gandi
family; only recently have any significant competitions for
party leadership come around.
• Emerged as the single biggest party in the Lok Sabha in the
2009 general election; 206 of its nominees were subsequently
elected to the 543-member house.
• Accordingly, as a participant in a coalition of political
organisations called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), it
achieved a majority, forming the government.

11. Bharatiya Janata Party
• One of India’s two main political parties; the other is the
Indian National Congress.
• Founded in 1980; second biggest political party in India,
in relation to parliament representation and in the
numerous state assemblies.
• Designates “integral humanism”, based upon a 1965
book by Deendayal Upadhyaya, to be its formal ideology
and key philosophy.
• Labelled as “Hindu nationalist”, and supports social
conservatism, self-reliance as outlined by the Swadeshi
movement, and a foreign policy focused on key
nationalist beliefs.
• Its party platform is normally believed to be right-wing
of the Indian political spectrum.
• Led the national government together with a coalition of
parties of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) from
1998-2004, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as PM,
accordingly making it the first non-Congress
government to spend a full term in office.
• Has been instrumental in the opposition in parliament
since its election defeat in the 2004 general elections.

12. New Delhi

13. Mumbai

14. The End ( )