India has always been a country dominated by agriculture. The land has given many natural resources to its people who use them not only to sustain themselves in today’s ever changing world but also sell the refined form of these natural resources to other countries of the world.
Copper ore, bauxite and iron ore are the three main natural resources found in Indian territory. Among these three, iron sees the maximum production here and is exported to rest of the world via the sea route. Orissa and Bihar are the two major iron producing states. In fact, southern Orissa employees thousands of people who mine almost a quarter of iron produced by the country as a whole.
Diamonds, gold and silver make up a small part of other natural resources found here. The state of Rajasthan is famous all over the world for the qualitative gem stones that are found in abundance here.
Coal is the major raw material for producing energy. According to a rough estimate, India has around 135 billion tons of coal in reserve, enough to last for more than 100 years. Though the coastal areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat have huge reserves of petroleum and other natural gases, it is not enough to meet the day to day requirement of the country. For its fuel, India is dependent on Middle East countries.
Recent years have seen a significant rise in production of electrical energy through nuclear energy. Few decades back, the industry was run only by hydroelectric power and coal. Himalayan region generates more than half of hydroelectric power though dams. The water thus collected is made available for irrigation and drinking purposes.
In most of the Indian villages, dried cow dung or wood is used as fuel for cooking and heating water. The demand for firewood has increases over a period of time and people are cutting forests everyday to cater their daily needs. This has resulted in reduction of 3 million acres of forest land across the country.

Our country is known for two “C”s – colorfulness and corruption.  In June, when the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) took out its annual report on the corruption index in the 180 countries of the world, India slipped two positions to rank at 74. (CPI is made by an independent international agency called International Transparency).

Since the practice of corruption is a deceitful act, the Indian population is largely seen as dishonest. While there are many honorable and noble people as well in the country, greediness and dishonesty is driving the remaining. Sometimes people have to get involved in corruption due to the compulsion of getting their work done.

Another reason of this country wide corruption is that we are surrounded by countries which themselves are so poor and continuously try to destabilize our economy in one way or another. Countries like Pakistan and Nepal rank at 140 and 135 respectively in the index. Iran and Libya are also not very far with 133th and 134^th position.

Meanwhile, China which was ranked jointly with India on 72 in 2007, slipped a step above to occupy the place higher that its neighbor this year. Russia has extremely high level of corruption, even after the Putin’s era and ranks at 145 in the index. Sri Lanka is on 96th position while Maldives is ranked 90.Bhutan is the least corrupted country in the Asian region which could be due to the nascent democracy in the country. New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Finland and Sweden have retained the top five spots this year as well. Myanmar and Somalia occupy the bottom position in the index. USA has retained its position on 20 and is just below Ireland, Germany, Japan and France.