India
Republic of India
- Region
- Asia · Southern Asia
- Capital
- New Delhi
- Population
- 1,463,865,525 (2025)
- Government
- federal parliamentary republic
- Currency
- Indian rupee (INR)
- Official languages
- English, Hindi, Tamil
- Spoken languages
- Hindi 43.6%, Bengali 8%, Marathi 6.9%, Telugu 6.7%, Tamil 5.7%, Gujarati 4.6%, Urdu 4.2%, Kannada 3.6%, Odia 3.1%, Malayalam 2.9%, Punjabi 2.7%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.1%
- Written scripts
- Latin, Devanagari, Tamil
- Area
- 3,287,590 km²
- Coastline
- Coastal
- UN member
- Yes
- Affiliations
- ASEAN (dialogue partner), BRICS, G20, IMF, Arab League (observer), OECD (partner), SCO (observer), WCO, WTO
- Borders
- Bangladesh , Bhutan , Myanmar , China , Nepal , Pakistan
Political stability
52 / 100
Economic stability
67 / 100
Population stability
92 / 100
0–100, higher is more stable. Political: World Bank governance score. Economic: government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and inflation proximity to 2% (World Bank). Population: stability of growth and net migration rates (World Bank).
Trade profile
- Key exports
- refined petroleum, packaged medicine, diamonds, broadcasting equipment, garments (2023)
- Key imports
- crude petroleum, gold, coal, natural gas, integrated circuits (2023)
- Natural resources
- coal (fourth-largest reserves in the world), antimony, iron ore, lead, manganese, mica, bauxite, rare earth elements, titanium ore, chromite, natural gas, diamonds
- Luxury goods
- cut and polished diamonds, gold jewelry, silk, basmati rice
- Primary route
- Arabian Sea gateways (Mundra, JNPT) to Europe via Suez and to the Gulf
- Secondary route
- Bay of Bengal services to Southeast and East Asia
The xin.bz view
- India supplies roughly 40% of world rice exports; its 2026 monsoon is running about 13% below normal, but roughly 90.7M t of central-pool stocks (50.5M t wheat, 40.2M t rice) give the government substantial room before export policy tightens.
- Monsoon weakness creates exposure across cotton, soybeans, corn, pulses, and the wheat and rapeseed crops that follow — while as the world’s largest vegetable-oil importer, India pulls on the same palm-oil supply Indonesia is diverting into biodiesel.
- The power system shows the monsoon paradox: localized heavy rain in coal states disrupted mining and rail, leaving 45 plants with critically low stocks and roughly 10 days of coal nationally while heat keeps electricity demand elevated.
- India’s August urea tender cleared 1.7795M t at $390–394/mt CFR — buying at that scale immediately tightens nearby global urea availability in a market already squeezed by Hormuz.
xin.bz coverage
El Niño: What the Media Has Wrong — and What It Means for Global Trade
The 2026–27 El Niño is on track to be one of the strongest on record. A quarter-by-quarter outlook of where supply falls, where it rises, and which trade corridors cannot adjust fast enough.
El Niño's Caribbean Chain Reaction: How Water Stress Could Become a Food, Freight and Stability Shock
El Niño connects Caribbean water stress, falling U.S. rice stocks, a weak Indian monsoon, and Panama Canal limits into one food, freight, and stability risk through mid-2027.
El Niño Is Tightening the World's Food Valves
India's 90.7M t grain buffer, early Philippine rice buying, Indonesia's B50 palm-oil pull, and Nepal's flood — governments now decide how much food this region releases to the world.
El Niño Is Increasing the World's Need for Eurasia — Geopolitics Will Decide What Gets Through
Russia's ~60M t exportable grain, Kazakh wheat and uranium, Belarusian potash, Turkmen gas, and the Middle Corridor — El Niño raises the world's need for Eurasia while geopolitics decides what gets through.
El Niño Is Raising the Middle East's Food and Water Needs — While War Is Rewriting How Supply Gets In and Energy Gets Out
Gulf desalination and grain buying, Egypt's Nile and Suez loops, Hormuz fertilizer constraints, and $280B+ in reconstruction demand — the Middle East sits on both sides of the El Niño shock.
Africa Is Building a Continental Trade System in Real Time: AfCFTA Moves From Treaty to Customs Gates, Payment Rails and Freight Corridors
AfCFTA's implementation era in 2026 — customs modernization, PAPSS payment expansion, the Abidjan-Lagos and Lobito corridors, and the regional manufacturing buildout reshaping intra-African trade.
Vessel-Days Are Becoming the Scarce Asset in Global Shipping
The merchant fleet is growing while effective capacity tightens — Hormuz detours, Panama slot cuts, war-risk insurance, officer shortages and drydocking are consuming the ship-days that move cargo.
Zimbabwe's Antimony Export Restriction Turns Processing Capacity Into Strategic Power
Zimbabwe has placed antimony and tungsten behind a national gate, and the decisive contest is now over who finances the processing capacity — in a market where three countries mine 85% of world supply.
Commodity Deep Dive ·
Potash Is the Potassium Backbone of Global Agriculture — and Its Supply Is Concentrated in a Handful of Countries
Potash (potassium chloride/MOP) deep dive — Canada, Russia, China, and Belarus at 76% of mine output, the rail-and-port chokepoints, storage, price history, and why potassium is agriculture's irreplaceable nutrient.
Commodity Deep Dive ·
Sorghum Is the Drought-Tolerant Grain Linking Food Security to U.S.–China Feed Trade
Sorghum deep dive — the U.S. supplies 50.6% of world exports and China takes 77.6% of imports, Kansas and Texas hold 82% of the U.S. crop, and one month of Plains drought cut USDA's forecast 22%.
Commodity Deep Dive ·
Fertilizer Converts Energy and Mined Minerals Into Crop Yield — and Its Supply Chain Has Become a Strategic Chokepoint
Fertilizer deep dive — 216M t of nutrients produced against 197M t used, nitrogen tied to natural gas, Hormuz choking a third of urea trade, and why N, P, and K are irreplaceable in plant nutrition.
Future Insight ·
Rearming the World Is Becoming a Race for Explosives, Factories, Critical Minerals, and Trusted Supply Chains
Future Insights deep dive — the 2026–2032 global rearmament cycle: a ~2.6 million tonne military replacement obligation, and the industrial race in explosives, propellant, rare-earth magnets, and trusted supply chains.
Future Insight ·
The Holiday Inventory Has Already Moved
Future Insights — the 2026 holiday season arrived through warehouses months before shoppers: purchase orders placed by May, inventory handed downstream in August, $1 trillion in U.S. sales on flat units, and factory labor tracing the new production map from India to Vietnam.
Trade research
- WTO trade profile — tariffs, trade in goods and services, top partners
- World Bank country data — GDP, trade share of GDP, logistics indicators
- OEC trade profile — export/import composition and partners, visualized
- ITC Trade Map — detailed trade statistics by product (ITC/UN Comtrade)
- CIA World Factbook — geography, economy, transportation infrastructure
xin.bz can watch India for you — email alerts when new disruptions hit. Start free
Sources: mledoze/countries (ODbL), CIA World Factbook (public domain), World Bank Open Data (CC BY-4.0), flag-icons (MIT). Stability scores are xin.bz composites of the cited World Bank indicators; routes and commodity notes are xin.bz assessments. Informational only — verify with official sources.