• Main international airport: Mumbai (12.8m passengers)
• Merchant fleet, total tonnage: 1028 ships (6.96m grt)

The transportation network

• Extent of inland waterways navigable by commercial craft: 16,180 km (10,054 miles)
• Extent of national paved road network: 1.53m km (948,854 miles)
• Extent of motorways, freeways or major national highways: 33,500 km (20,816 miles)
• Extent of commercial rail network: 63,140 km (39,233 miles)

The state-owned railroad system, the largest in Asia, carries 14 million people a day and employs over 1.5 million. Strict controls on diesel emissions from cars and buses were enforced in 2001. Cycle and scooter rickshaws abound in urban centers. Kolkata (Calcutta), site of India's first metro system, still has rickshaws pulled by hand.

Even without its burgeoning economy and its 1.3 million men under arms, India's size, population, and strategic location would guarantee it a prominent voice in regional and world affairs. A traditional policy of nonalignment has allowed India to become a powerful and effective spokesman for developing countries within organizations such as the WTO. India wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and is publicly supported in this ambition by former colonial power the UK.

Slow but steady talks on a long-running border dispute with China have averted a return to the dangerous tensions of the 1960s, and the main preoccupation of foreign policy has been the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. Pulling back from the brink of war in 2002, India and Pakistan have since opened high-level talks.