India

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

The Indian economy is the world's tenth-largest by nominal GDP and third-largest by purchasing power parity Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies; it is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, illiteracy, corruption, malnutrition, inadequate public healthcare, and terrorism.

The age of consent for consential homosexaul sex is 18. Same-sex relationships are not legal. An old British-era law banning "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" was used to prosecute people for having anal or oral sex, though prosecutions are rare.

Prostitution (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal, but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes. Male prostitution is all but invisible and not much is currently known about the status of male sex workers.