Economy, Agriculture & Industry of Uttar Pradesh — Practice

Question 1

In which crops is Uttar Pradesh India's largest producer, and where does it rank in rice?

Accepted Answer

Uttar Pradesh is India's largest producer of sugarcane, wheat, and potato. In rice, UP ranks roughly second nationally, after West Bengal. UP is also a significant producer of pulses and oilseeds, though sugarcane, wheat, potato, and rice are the four crops most directly examinable as UP's specific agricultural leadership facts.

Question 2

Where and when did the One District One Product (ODOP) scheme originate?

Accepted Answer

ODOP originated in Uttar Pradesh, launched in 2018 under the Yogi Adityanath government, before being scaled into a national programme now covering 770-plus districts across India. The scheme's core logic is identifying and promoting one signature, locally distinctive product per district — for example, a specific craft, food product, or manufactured good tied to that district's traditional strength — through branding, marketing, and credit support. UP's own recognised-product count under the scheme has continued to grow since launch, with an 'ODOP 2.0' policy phase emphasising branding, packaging, and quality upgrades over simple product identification.

Question 3

Name the six nodes of the UP Defence Industrial Corridor (UPDIC) and the agency responsible for executing it.

Accepted Answer

The UP Defence Industrial Corridor spans six nodes: Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Kanpur, Chitrakoot, and Lucknow — deliberately spread across the state rather than concentrated in one region, extending defence-sector manufacturing investment specifically into Bundelkhand and central UP alongside the more industrially developed west. UPEIDA (the UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority, established in 2007) is the lead executing agency for the corridor, in addition to its core mandate of expressway construction — reflecting UP's deliberate coordination of infrastructure and industrial-corridor policy under a single nodal body.

Question 4

Compare the completion status of the Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, and Ganga Expressways.

Accepted Answer

The Purvanchal Expressway (340.9 km, 6-lane, extending into eastern UP) opened fully in November 2021. The Bundelkhand Expressway (296 km, 4-lane, extending into southern/southwestern UP) opened fully in July 2022 — both are complete and operational. The Ganga Expressway (594 km, 6-lane, greenfield, connecting western and eastern UP along the Ganga) remains under construction; reported completion figures have varied and should be checked against a current source before an exam attempt, since asserting it as fully open without verification risks stating an outdated fact. This distinction — two operational, one still under construction — is itself worth naming explicitly rather than treating 'UP's expressways' as a single completed category.

Question 5

What role does the Noida-Greater Noida corridor play in UP's electronics manufacturing?

Accepted Answer

The Noida-Greater Noida corridor, anchored by two Greenfield Electronics Manufacturing Clusters — at Sector 24 along the Yamuna Expressway and at Ecotech VI & VII in Greater Noida — hosts major mobile-phone manufacturers, including Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo, and is commonly cited as contributing a large share of India's total mobile-phone manufacturing output. This corridor sits within the broader YEIDA (Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority) industrial belt, which also hosts UP's Electronics, Apparel, Handicraft, and Toy Parks under the state's MSME-cluster policy — making the Yamuna Expressway corridor UP's single most significant manufacturing-investment zone.

Question 6

"Uttar Pradesh's recent industrial strategy treats infrastructure and industrial-corridor policy as a single coordinated effort." Examine this statement with reference to UPEIDA's role. (15 marks, ~250 words)

Accepted Answer

This statement is well supported by how UP has structured its industrial-development institutions and by the geographic pattern of its recent investment, and examining UPEIDA's dual role makes the case directly.

UPEIDA, established in 2007 as the UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority, was originally created for expressway construction and land acquisition — a pure infrastructure mandate. Over the past decade, however, UPEIDA has also become the lead executing agency for the UP Defence Industrial Corridor, spanning six nodes (Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Kanpur, Chitrakoot, Lucknow), and is currently pursuing a further programme of Integrated Manufacturing & Logistics Clusters (IMLCs) sited specifically along UP's major expressway routes. This is a deliberate institutional choice: rather than a separate industrial-development body operating independently of infrastructure planning, UP has placed both functions under one nodal agency.

The geographic pattern of investment reinforces this reading. The Purvanchal and Bundelkhand Expressways were built into UP's historically underdeveloped eastern and southern regions — the same regions Section III's regional-disparity content identifies as lagging — and industrial-corridor nodes (several UPDIC nodes, MSME parks) have followed along or near these new expressway routes rather than remaining concentrated only in the already-developed west.

This coordinated design — one agency, infrastructure and industry planned together, corridors deliberately routed toward underdeveloped regions — supports treating UP's approach as a genuinely integrated strategy rather than infrastructure and industrial policy operating as separate, uncoordinated tracks, which is what the statement specifically claims.

Question 7

Name UP's three UNESCO World Heritage Sites and explain their significance to the state's tourism economy.

Accepted Answer

Uttar Pradesh holds three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, all in the Agra region: the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri. The Taj Mahal specifically is consistently India's most-visited ASI-ticketed monument, anchoring Agra as UP's single most important conventional tourism destination. Beyond this Agra cluster, UP's tourism economy has increasingly been driven by religious tourism — Varanasi, Ayodhya, and Mathura-Vrindavan — a trend that accelerated sharply after the Ram Temple's consecration in January 2024 and the 2025 Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj. Any specific visitor-count projection tied to a single site or event (for instance, analyst projections for Ayodhya's annual visitor numbers) should be explicitly attributed as an estimate rather than cited as a measured fact.

Question 8

Is it accurate to say Uttar Pradesh has overtaken Tamil Nadu as India's second-largest state economy?

Accepted Answer

No — this is a commonly circulated but debunked social-media claim. Per the most recent verified RBI Handbook of Statistics data available, Uttar Pradesh's GSDP (approximately ₹22.57 lakh crore) remained behind Tamil Nadu's (approximately ₹23.64 lakh crore), keeping UP in third place among Indian state economies, behind Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. UP's rank as the third-largest state economy is the reliably citable fact; any claim of UP overtaking Tamil Nadu specifically should be treated with scepticism unless backed by a current, dated, credible source.

Practice — Economy, Agriculture & Industry of Uttar Pradesh

Sign in to save attempts to your dashboard and track your accuracy over time

Find a verified tutor

Join a live course

Browse coaching centres

About

Categories

Support

Documentation

Get Study Tips & Updates

Download Our App

Download for iOS

Download for Android

Popular Cities