Arrays allow storing and manipulating a collection of related data elements. They can hold groups of integers, characters, or other data types. Declaring individual variables becomes difficult when storing many elements, so arrays provide an efficient solution. Arrays are declared with a datatype and size, and elements can be initialized, accessed, inserted, deleted, and manipulated using their index positions. Common array operations include displaying values, finding maximum/minimum values, calculating sums, and passing arrays to functions. Multi-dimensional arrays extend the concept to store elements in a table structure accessed by row and column indexes.