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This article was first published 12 years ago

20 amazing facts you must know about India

Last updated on: September 30, 2011 20:14 IST

Image: Men work at the construction site of a high-rise commercial building in New Delhi.
Photographs: Parivartan Sharma/Reuters.

India is set to emerge as the world's third largest economy by 2030, according to a Standard Chartered Global Research study.

By 2030, India will be at number three position with an economy of $30.3 trillion. While China will be the topper with a $73.5 trillion economy, the United States will be ranked second at $38.2 trillion, says StanChart.

India could be 8.4 times bigger than it is today, while China is estimated to grow 4 times bigger and the European Union and the US 1.7 times, by 2030.

StanChart said that within India there is often a hesitation to anticipate the ability of the economy to grow at a faster pace.

Click NEXT to find out what makes India an amazing country despite its share of problems and controversies ...

20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: GE Healthcare employee assembles a CT scan table in Bangalore.
Photographs: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters.

The Indian economy is the world's tenth largest in terms of nominal GDP and the fourth largest in terms of purchasing power parity.

India is likely to grow faster, on average, than China over the next two decades.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: A container is lifted to load onto a truck at Thar Dry Port in Sanand.
Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters.

India is the seventh-largest country by area and second-largest by population and most populous democracy in the world.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: An employee works at an assembly line of Twister motorcycle.
Photographs: Adnan Abidi/Reuters.

India is likely to become the world's fastest growing economy in 2012. India's GDP per capita will quadruple from 2007 to 2020, according to Goldman Sachs.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: An employee operates a floor cleaning machine in front of a Swarovski showroom in Mumbai.
Photographs: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters.

India's average quarterly GDP growth was 8.40 per cent from 2004 to 2010, hitting a high of 10.10 per cent in September 2006 and a record low of 5.50 per cent in December 2004.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Dancers perform during the Republic Day celebrations.
Photographs: Ajay Verma/Reuters.

Around 25 per cent of the world's new workers will be Indian in the next three years. The average Indian is nearly 20 years younger than the average Japanese.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Harwinder Singh Gill, an artisan, displays his creation of an Indian map carved on an eggshell.
Photographs: Munish Sharma/Reuters.

Over half of India's population is below 25 years. By 2020, the average age of an Indian is expected to be 29 years.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Employees work at a call centre near Srinagar.
Photographs: Fayaz Kabli/Reuters.

India is today the world's most preferred destination for outsourcing. Half the world's outsourced IT services come from India.

Seven of the world's top 15 technology outsourcing companies are based in India.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: A boy dressed as Lord Krishna is carried during Janmashtami celebrations.
Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters.

The 'place value system' and the 'decimal system' were developed in India in 100 B.C.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries.
Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters.

India now has a record number of 55 billionaires, according to the Forbes 2011 world billionaires' list.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: A man makes a phone call on his mobile phone in front of an advertisement for Reliance in Mumbai.
Photographs: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters.

India's telecommunication industry, the world's fastest growing, added 227 million subscribers during 2010-11.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Computers packed into boxes are transported on a conveyor belt at a Dell factory in Sriperumbudur.
Photographs: Babu/Reuters.

Industry accounts for 28 per cent of the GDP and employs 14 per cent of the total workforce. In absolute terms, India is 12th in the world in terms of nominal factory output.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Celebrations to mark the Baisakhi festival.
Photographs: Mukesh Gupta/Reuters.

India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry, logging and fishing accounted for 15.7 per cent of the GDP in 2009��, employed 52.1 per cent of the total workforce.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: People walk through paddy fields in West Bengal.
Photographs: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters.

India is the second largest producer of rice in the world after China. Andhra Pradesh is the second largest rice producing state in India with Uttar Pradesh being the largest.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: A retail trader arranges a bag containing pulses inside his shop in Jammu.
Photographs: Amit Gupta/Reuters.

India is the largest producer in the world of milk, jute and pulses. India is also the second largest producer and the largest consumer of silk in the world.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: A worker (R) fills plastic containers with petrol at a pump in Kolkata.
Photographs: Parth Sanyal/Reuters.

As of 2009, India's total proven oil reserves stood at 775 million metric tonnes while gas reserves stood at 1074 billion cubic metres.

India is the fourth largest consumer of oil in the world and imported $82.1 billion worth of oil in the first three quarters of 2010.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Linemen set up high tension power lines on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Photographs: Amit Dave/Reuters.

India had an installed power generation capacity of 164,835 megawatts (MW) as of 2010.

Thermal power contributed 64.6 per cent, hydroelectricity 24.7 per cent and other sources of renewable energy 7.7 per cent, and nuclear power 2.9 per cent.

India meets most of its domestic energy demand through its 106 billion tonnes of coal reserves.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: World's third largest road network in India.

India has the world's third largest road network, covering about 3.3 million kilometers and carrying 65 per cent of freight and 80 per cent of passenger traffic. Container traffic is growing at 15 per cent a year.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Indian rupee notes.

There has been a dramatic increase of almost 162 per cent in the remittance that India receives from overseas Indians over the last eight years, according to the World Bank.

While India received nearly $21 billion from overseas Indians in 2003, the figure jumped to $55 billion in 2010.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: An overcrowded train.
Photographs: Reuters.

Six low-income states - Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh - are home to more than one third of India's population.

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20 amazing facts you must know about India

Image: Post box.

India has the largest number of post offices in the world.