For a country of its population, India seems to be fairly small in size.
Others may disagree, and say that India is a larger than average country.
In any case, do you think India’s size is a net benefit or drawback to its interests? I’m interested especially in economics measures, but other political, cultural, military factors are also interesting.
Well, India’s bigger than it looks on most maps (due to the distorting effect of the Mercator projection). It is, in fact, the seventh-biggest country on the planet, after Russia, Canada, the US, China, Brazil and Australia.
But, yes, it’s densely populated. It’s the second most populous country after China. The result is a population density of 379 persons per square kilometre. That’s slightly higher than Belgium (952) or Israel (963) but lower than the Netherlands (1051) or Haiti (997).
As the comparators show, there isn’t a straight-line relationshiop between population density and standard of living but, yes, let’s accept that India’s population density exceeds what is optimal. Not many people would say that the problem there is “India’s size”; it is, as we have noted, among the largest countries on the planet, and any attempt to increase its size must involve annexing territory from Pakistan or Bangladesh which, other objections aside, wouldn’t do much to solve the problem; they are both densely populated themselves.
No, most analysis would say that the problem here is not India’s small size, but India’s large population. Population size is much more malleable than territory.
Did you mean a density of 973 for India?
I hope UDS isn’t implying they’re a backward people.
In terms of economics, country size tends to be an understudied measure. I’ll venture the (somewhat informed) guess that it’s so because people don’t really think it matters too much. By itself, size doesn’t tell you a lot. If it’s population density that you’re referring to, then as UDS mentioned, India isn’t the most densely populated country. It’s one of the most densely populated, but there are countries such as South Korea and the Netherlands that are more densely populated, but do much better in terms of their economy.