Chhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000 and lies in central-eastern India. The capital is Raipur. The northern part of the state is a rice-growing plain, while the south — Bastar and Dantewada — is hill and forest country along the Eastern Ghats.

Forests cover roughly two-fifths of the state, and the tribal population is among the largest of any state in absolute terms. The economy rests on minerals and coal: Chhattisgarh has some of India’s largest reserves of coal, iron ore, bauxite and tin, and the state is a major producer of steel and sponge iron. Rice, tendu leaves and forest produce are the rural mainstays.

Bastar has been the centre of the longest-running Maoist insurgency in India, which has shaped policing, development spending and access to large parts of the southern districts for two decades. The mineral wealth that underwrites the state budget is concentrated in those same districts, which have among the state’s worst human development indicators — a gap that is itself a subject of political argument.