Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state, with more residents than any country in the world except a handful. It lies in the Ganga plain in northern India, bounded by Uttarakhand and Nepal to the north and Madhya Pradesh to the south. The capital is Lucknow. The terrain is almost entirely flat and riverine, drained by the Ganga, Yamuna, Ghaghara and their tributaries.

Agriculture employs the largest share of the workforce, with sugarcane, wheat, rice, pulses and potatoes as the main crops; the state is India’s largest producer of sugarcane and its mills are a significant industry. Manufacturing ranges from leather and textiles — Kanpur, Agra, Moradabad and Varanasi are long-established centres — to electronics assembly around Noida, where a large mobile-phone manufacturing cluster has grown. The state has built an extensive expressway network since the 2010s.

Despite its size, income per person in Uttar Pradesh is well below the national average, and its health and education indicators are weak even by that standard. The state has the largest number of parliamentary seats of any state, which makes its politics decisive in national elections. It contains Ayodhya, Varanasi and Prayagraj, three of the most significant pilgrimage sites in India, and the Taj Mahal at Agra.