Coverage
Services of State
The permanent arms of the Indian state — the armed forces, space, defence research, intelligence, the paramilitary and the judiciary, each with its own record.
9 maintained dossiers, each carrying a timeline from 1947 or its founding, its sources tiered by provenance, and the questions readers ask about it answered on the page.
These are the instruments that outlast governments: the three armed services and the Coast Guard, the space and defence-research agencies, the intelligence and central armed police organisations, the permanent civil service, and the courts. They differ from ministries in what they do — they execute rather than allocate — and most of them sit under a ministry that answers for them in Parliament. The Army, Navy and Air Force answer through the Ministry of Defence; the central armed police forces through the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Each dossier records the statute, order or constitutional provision that created the body, the remit it was given, and its own chronology. Where a service has a published order of battle, an annual report or a recruitment portal, those primaries are linked directly.
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Defence Research and Development Organisation
The Defence Research and Development Organisation is the research-and-development wing of India's Ministry of Defence, tasked with making the armed forces self-reliant in weapons and military systems.
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Department of Atomic Energy
The Department of Atomic Energy is the Government of India agency that runs the country's civil and strategic nuclear enterprise end to end, from uranium mining and heavy-water production to reactor construction, reprocessing and waste management.
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Indian Air Force
The Indian Air Force is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces, charged with securing Indian airspace and conducting aerial warfare.
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Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land-warfare service of the Indian Armed Forces and the largest of its three branches.
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Indian Coast Guard
The Indian Coast Guard is an armed force of the Union under the Ministry of Defence, constituted under the Coast Guard Act, 1978 to protect India's maritime and national interests in its maritime zones.
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Indian Navy
The Indian Navy is the maritime-warfare service of the Indian Armed Forces, responsible for securing India's coastline, island territories and sea lines of communication across the Indian Ocean.
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Indian Space Research Organisation
The Indian Space Research Organisation is India's national space agency and the research-and-development arm of the Department of Space, which reports directly to the Prime Minister.
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Judiciary of India
The Judiciary is the third branch of the Indian state and the guardian of its Constitution.
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The Indian Civil Service
The Indian Civil Service is the country's permanent, career bureaucracy — the administrative machinery that runs the Union and the states regardless of which party governs.