Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh occupies the south-eastern coast between the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal. The capital is Amaravati, though the state shared Hyderabad with Telangana for the decade after the 2014 bifurcation, as the reorganisation Act provided. It has one of the longest coastlines of any Indian state.

The Godavari and Krishna deltas make the coastal belt one of India’s most productive agricultural regions, growing rice, cotton, chilli and pulses, with extensive aquaculture along the coast. Visakhapatnam holds the state’s main port and its heavy industry — steel, refining and shipbuilding — while newer IT and electronics clusters have grown around the coastal cities.

Water is the defining political question. The Polavaram project on the Godavari has been under construction for years and remains incomplete, and the allocation of the Krishna’s water between Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka is still disputed. Tirupati, in the Chittoor district, is among the most visited religious sites in the world.