Uttar Pradesh's electoral battle royale kicks off in its western region

UP's electoral battle royale kicks off in its Western region, a 350km-long, 100km-wide curve, mostly between the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. It's the most urbanised, most industrial and richest region of UP, home to almost a fifth of the state's population in its 15 districts.

Agriculture is the main occupation, but its nature is vastly different in the northern part of this region -Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr etc -from most of the remaining state because this was the crucible of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s.Adoption of intensive farming with high water use, high yielding seeds and high chemical inputs boosted wheat and sugarcane production sky high, which laid the basis of prosperity .

The southern part -from Mathura and Agra to Etah, Firozabad etc -is potato land, along with wheat and pulses. In part because of the agricultural boom, but also because of the nearness to Delhi, the whole belt is much more urbanised than the rest of UP, with 20 of the state's top 60 cities in this compact region, including four of UP's 13 municipal corporation level cities -Meerut, Agra, Aligarh and Ghaziabad.

The region also has the highest concentration of higher educational institutions, especially professional ones, drawn by the large urban and high income population.

But if you probe below the surface, this veneer of prosperity shatters. Green Revolution-style farming has hit a plateau. In the absence of public investments in irrigation, farmers have become dependent on groundwater for watering their thirsty sugarcane and wheat crops, causing severe depletion and portents of a dark future. Intensive farming has also created a large underclass of landless, especially among dalits, that is now flexing its political muscles.

The region is also home to a substantial Muslim population, a section of which is also landowning. Industrial areas like Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida, Agra, Moradabad, Firozabad draw migrants from eastern UP and are teeming with nearly two million low-income families living in slum -like conditions. All this creates a melting pot that often simmers with discontent and strife.

The region also represents a bizarre reality of India, that relative prosperity does not vanquish backwardness of centuries. One marker of this is the abysmal child sex ratio of the region, which stands at 859 girls for every 1,000 boys compared to 902 for the whole state and 919 for the country.

Literacy rate in the region is about 60%, lower than the state's 68%. Here, too, discrimination against girl child is visible with 66% of villages having a girls school five or more kilometres away , in contrast to 33% villages with boys school at that distance.