The Indian parliament has amended the constitution many times since 1950. Most of these amendments were minor, but others were of major significance: for example, the 7th amendment (1956) provided for a major reorganization of the boundaries of the states, and the 73rd and 74th amendments (1993) gave constitutional permanence to units of local self-government (village and city councils).

The president is elected for a five-year term by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of the national and state legislatures. The president is eligible for successive terms. The vice president is elected in the same manner as the president and assumes the role of the president if the president is incapacitated or otherwise unable to perform his or her duties.

A council of ministers, or cabinet, is headed by a prime minister and wields executive power at the national level. The council, which is responsible to parliament, is selected by the president upon the advice of the prime minister. Each council member heads an administrative department of the central government. In most important respects, the Indian cabinet system is identical to that of Britain. There is a constitutionally fixed division of responsibilities between national and state governments, so that the national government has exclusive powers over areas such as foreign affairs, while the states are responsible for health care systems and agricultural development, among other areas. Some areas are the joint responsibility of both the national and state governments, such as education.

The actual administration is carried out by a many-tiered civil service, almost all of whom are recruited by a competitive, merit-based examination. At the top is the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), whose senior members serve as the administrative heads of departments, responsible only to their minister. All members of this service are assigned to particular states and spend most of their early career serving in those states. They typically start as district-level administrators and rapidly move to head state-level departments. Additional central government civil services include the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Police Service, and services for audits and accounts, posts and telegraphs, customs and excise, and railroads.

Members of the Rajya Sabha are elected by the members of the state legislative assemblies, except for 12 presidential appointees who have special knowledge or practical experience in literature, the arts, science, or social services. The elected members are chosen by a system of proportional representation for a six-year term; one-third of the Rajya Sabha is chosen every two years. A two-thirds majority is required for some constitutional amendments to pass; some amendments also require ratification by one-half of the states.

The basic territorial unit of administration in the states is the district; there are 537 districts in India. Within the districts are units called tehsils or talukas for departments such as revenue and education, and "blocks," which are the base units for agrarian development. Local self-government includes village councils (panchayats) and municipal councils, which began under British rule. Local governments have been saddled with major duties, few sources of revenue, and a weak base of political power. These bodies were frequently superseded for long periods by the state governments. In the mid-1990s new constitutional provisions, including the requirement that a percentage of village council seats must go to women, were implemented to help improve these local governments. A few states, most notably West Bengal and Karnâtaka, had successful village government systems in the 1980s and 1990s.

India’s two major socialist parties evolved out of the Janata (People’s) Party. The Janata was a coalition of opposition parties formed in 1977 to defeat the Congress Party and abolish emergency rule, a set of extraordinary provisions restricting democratic freedoms that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had instituted in 1975. After winning the 1977 elections and repealing the emergency laws, the coalition fractured in 1979. Its primary successors are the Janata Dal (People’s Party), a secular, socialist party appealing to lower caste and Muslim voters, and the Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party (BJP), which promotes Hindu nationalism and supports socialistic economic goals. The BJP became the largest single party in the Lok Sabha in 1996 and retained that position in the 1998 elections. The party’s main supporters tend to be middle-class Hindu voters, who see the BJP as having greater discipline and integrity than the Congress or Janata Dal parties.

The far left of the political spectrum is occupied by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which draws support from urban and rural laborers. The more moderate Communist Party of India has been gradually losing its share of voters but remains a significant participant in coalition politics. The newest national party, the Bahujan Samaj (Society’s Majority) Party, draws on the support of the scheduled caste population.

A number of the national parties are powerful in only a few states. The BJP is weak in eastern and southern India. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been in power in the state of West Bengal since the 1977 election but is a force in only one other major state, Kerala. The Janata Dal is a major party in Bihâr and Karnâtaka, while a socialist party successor to the Janata has been in power in Uttar Pradesh. In Tamil Nâdu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and smaller states, particularly in the northeast, regional parties are of major importance. These regional parties deliberately focus on support of particular people of a particular state and thus have no ambition of extending their reach to other states. They elect a significant number of members of parliament, and many have been included in coalition governments by forming alliances with larger parties.

Health care facilities have been extended to all parts of the country, with more than 20,000 primary health centers and more than 100,000 subcenters in 1995. Still, the number and quality of personnel staffing them are less than desirable, and spending levels have been low. Although the number of hospital beds in relation to the population has increased since independence, there are still too few doctors for the population, particularly in rural areas. The government also promotes family planning and alternate systems of health care, particularly those with deep Indian roots such as Ayurvedic medicine.

Life expectancy at birth was 63 years in 1998, compared with 32 years in 1941. The infant mortality rate is still high at about 63 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1998, down from about 150 per 1,000 live births in the late 1940s. Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, and deaths on a large scale due to cholera, influenza, and other similar diseases have also been eliminated. Malaria and tuberculosis occur at much reduced rates, but new drug-resistant varieties are cause for concern. While the number of cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) were few in the mid-1990s, the number of people with the virus that causes AIDS had exploded by then, with some estimates of more than 1 million infected. Efforts to check the spread of the disease, particularly prevalent among prostitutes in major cities and among drug users in some of the northeastern areas, have not been very effective. Malnutrition remains a serious problem, despite the gradually increasing amount of grain available per capita (rice, wheat, and grains such as millet remain the major food source of most Indians). Public sanitation facilities are not adequate, and in most areas, including most towns, smaller cities, and the countryside, are almost nonexistent.

Welfare programs for the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes (including the Harijans, or Untouchables) have centered on "compensatory discrimination," which is similar to affirmative action: positions are reserved for this population in the legislature, civil services, and educational institutions. Also, education subsidies are provided, including scholarships and reduced fees. A national commission for scheduled castes and tribes monitors progress in ending discrimination against these groups and progress in their social and economic standing. Public discrimination has become rare, and quite a few individuals have risen to positions of influence and respect, including India’s first Harijan president, Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who was elected in 1997. Private discrimination in housing and employment continues, however, and the desperately poor of the countryside, constituting the majority of these groups, remain virtually powerless against exploitation and physical abuse.

There are a wide variety of programs intended to improve the welfare of women and children, but they have had little impact in parts of the country (particularly the northern states) where the problem is most acute. Female children suffer particularly: they are often neglected in infancy, sometimes resulting in death. Also, they may be kept out of school or married off early. Programs for children, such as those for supplemental nutrition, have little effect in situations where child labor is endemic.

Military units of all branches are well equipped. India has received extensive military aid, especially from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Many of its weapons systems, including some of the most advanced such as missiles, are manufactured in India. The country exploded its first nuclear device in 1974, leading to an arms race with neighboring Pakistan. Exactly 24 years later, India set off five more nuclear devices and declared itself a "nuclear weapons state." Pakistan responded within weeks with its own nuclear tests.