title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Additionally, the following characters, mentioned in the novel, play a significant role in the world-building of 1984. Whether these characters are real or fabrications of Party propaganda is something that neither Winston nor the reader is permitted to know:


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Many of Orwell's earlier writings clearly indicate that he originally welcomed the prospect of a socialist revolution in the UK, and indeed hoped to himself take part in such a revolution. The concept of "English Socialism" first appeared in Orwell's 1941 essay "", in which Orwell outlined a relatively humane revolution—establishing a revolutionary regime which "will shoot traitors, but give them a solemn trial beforehand, and occasionally acquit them" and which "will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but will interfere very little with the spoken and written word"; the "English Socialism" which Orwell foresaw in 1941 would even "abolish the House of Lords, but retain the Monarchy".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In the novel, Winston Smith's memories and his reading of the proscribed book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after the Second World War, the United Kingdom became involved in a war during the early 1950s in which nuclear weapons destroyed hundreds of cities in Europe, western Russia and North America. Colchester was destroyed, and London also suffered widespread aerial raids, leading Winston's family to take refuge in a London Underground station. The United States absorbed the British Commonwealth and Latin America, resulting in the superstate of Oceania. The new nation fell into civil war, but who fought whom is left unclear (there is a reference to the child Winston having seen rival militias in the streets, each one having a shirt of a distinct colour for its members). It is also unclear what The Party's name was while there were more than one, and whether it was a radical faction of the British Labour Party or a new formation arising during the turbulent 1950s. Eventually, Ingsoc won and gradually formed a totalitarian government across Oceania. Orwell does not explain in the novel how the US came to embrace "English Socialism" as its ruling ideology; in his lifetime, a socialist revolution was a concrete possibility in the UK, and taken seriously, but socialism of any kind was a marginal phenomenon in the United States.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Meanwhile, Eurasia was formed when the Soviet Union conquered mainland Europe, creating a single state stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait, under a Neo-Stalinist regime. In effect, the situation of 1940–1944—the UK facing an enemy-held Europe across the Channel—was recreated, and this time permanently—neither side contemplating an invasion, their wars held in other parts of the world. Eastasia, the last superstate established, emerged only after "a decade of confused fighting". It includes the Asian lands conquered by China and Japan. (The book was written before the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party in the Civil War). Although Eastasia is prevented from matching Eurasia's size, its larger populace compensates for that handicap.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: While citizens in each state are trained to despise the ideologies of the other two as uncivilised and barbarous, Goldstein's book explains that in fact the superstates' ideologies are practically identical and that the public's ignorance of this fact is imperative so that they might continue believing otherwise. The only references to the exterior world for the Oceanian citizenry are propaganda and (probably fake) maps fabricated by the Ministry of Truth to ensure people's belief in "the war".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: However, due to the fact that Winston only barely remembers these events as well as the Party's constant manipulation of historical records, the continuity and accuracy of these events are unknown, and exactly how the superstates' ruling parties managed to gain their power is also left unclear. Winston notes that the Party has claimed credit for inventing helicopters and aeroplanes, while Julia theorises that the perpetual bombing of London is merely a false-flag operation designed to convince the populace that a war is occurring. If the official account was accurate, Smith's strengthening memories and the story of his family's dissolution suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first, followed by civil war featuring "confused street fighting in London itself" and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively calls "the Revolution".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: It is very difficult to trace the exact chronology, but most of the global societal reorganisation occurred between 1945 and the early 1960s. Winston and Julia meet in the ruins of a church that was destroyed in a nuclear attack "thirty years" earlier, which suggests 1954 as the year of the atomic war that destabilised society and allowed the Party to seize power. It is stated in the novel that the "fourth quarter of 1983" was "also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan", which implies that the first three-year plan began in 1958. By that same year, the Party had apparently gained control of Oceania.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Among other things, the Revolution completely obliterates all religion. While the underground "Brotherhood" might or might not exist, there is no suggestion of any clergy trying to keep any religion alive underground. It is noted that, since the Party does not really care what the proles think or do, they might have been permitted to have religious worship had they wanted to—but they show no such inclination. Among the manifestly absurd "confessions" extracted from "thought criminals" is religious belief—however, but no one takes this seriously. Churches have been demolished or converted to other uses—St Martin-in-the-Fields has become a military museum, while Saint Clement Danes, destroyed in a WWII bombing, is in this future never rebuilt. The idea of a revolutionary regime totally destroying religion, with relative ease, is shared with the otherwise very different future of H.G.Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In 1984, there is a perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the superstates that emerged from the global atomic war. "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong that it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two superstates, despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, the superstates' governments rewrite history to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces are already accustomed to doublethink and accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the Arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (Northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies fighting Eurasia in northern Africa and the Malabar Coast.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: That alliance ends, and Oceania, allied with Eurasia, fights Eastasia, a change occurring on Hate Week, dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party's perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence, an orator changes the name of the enemy from "Eurasia" to "Eastasia" without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed, they tear them down; the Party later claims to have captured the whole of Africa.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Goldstein's book explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities so that the economy of a superstate cannot support economic equality, with a high standard of life for every citizen. By using up most of the produced goods, the proles are kept poor and uneducated, and the Party hopes that they will neither realise what the government is doing nor rebel. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion but dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war's purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s, the superstates stopped it for fear that it would imbalance the powers. The military technology in the novel differs little from that of World War II, but strategic bomber aeroplanes are replaced with rocket bombs, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (they were very minor in World War II) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses (island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform; in the novel, one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The perpetual war is fought for control of the "disputed area" lying between the frontiers of the superstates, which forms "a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin and Hong Kong", which includes Equatorial Africa, the Middle East, India and Indonesia. The disputed area is where the superstates capture slave labour. Fighting also takes place between Eurasia and Eastasia in Manchuria, Mongolia and Central Asia, and between Eurasia and Oceania over various islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In London, the capital city of Airstrip One, Oceania's four government ministries are in pyramids (300 m high), the façades of which display the Party's three slogans - "WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH". As mentioned, the ministries are deliberately named after the opposite (doublethink) of their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." (Part II, Chapter IX – "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism").


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: While a ministry is supposedly headed by a minister, the ministers heading these four ministries are never mentioned. They seem to be completely out of the public view, Big Brother being the only, ever-present public face of the government. Also, while an army fighting a war is typically headed by generals, none is ever mentioned by name. News reports of the ongoing war assume that Big Brother personally commands Oceania's fighting forces and give him personal credit for victories and successful strategic concepts. This goes much further than Soviet propaganda ever did, even at the height of Stalin's cult of personality.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Ministry of Peace supports and engages in Oceania's perpetual war against either of the two other superstates:


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognised and not recognised by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Ministry of Plenty rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, it claims to have raised the standard of living, even during times when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. The Ministry of Truth substantiates the Ministry of Plenty's claims by manipulating historical records to report numbers supporting the claims of "increased rations". The Ministry of Plenty also runs the national lottery as a distraction for the proles; Party members understand it to be a sham process in which winnings are never paid out.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith works in the Records Department, "rectifying" historical records to accord with Big Brother's current pronouncements so that everything the Party says appears to be true.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Ministry of Love identifies, monitors, arrests and converts real and imagined dissidents. This is also the place where the Thought Police beat and torture dissidents, after which they are sent to Room 101 to face "the worst thing in the world"—until love for Big Brother and the Party replaces dissension.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Ingsoc (English Socialism) is the predominant ideology and philosophy of Oceania, and Newspeak is the official language of official documents. Orwell depicts the Party's ideology as an oligarchical worldview that "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in the novel. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party Ingsoc wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In modern culture, the term "Big Brother" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: "The Principles of Newspeak" is an academic essay appended to the novel. It describes the development of Newspeak, an artificial, minimalistic language designed to ideologically align thought with the principles of Ingsoc by stripping down the English language in order to make the expression of "heretical" thoughts (i.e. thoughts going against Ingsoc's principles) impossible. The idea that a language's structure can be used to influence thought is known as linguistic relativity.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Whether or not the Newspeak appendix implies a hopeful end to "Nineteen Eighty-Four" remains a critical debate. Many claim that it does, citing the fact that it is in standard English and is written in the past tense: "Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised" (p. 422). Some critics (Atwood, Benstead, Milner, Pynchon) claim that for Orwell, Newspeak and the totalitarian governments are all in the past.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Thoughtcrime describes a person's politically unorthodox thoughts, such as unspoken beliefs and doubts that contradict the tenets of Ingsoc (English Socialism), the dominant ideology of Oceania. In the official language of Newspeak, the word crimethink describes the intellectual actions of a person who entertains and holds politically unacceptable thoughts; thus the government of the Party controls the speech, the actions, and the thoughts of the citizens of Oceania. In contemporary English usage, the word "thoughtcrime" describes beliefs that are contrary to accepted norms of society, and is used to describe theological concepts, such as disbelief and idolatry, and the rejection of an ideology.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: "Nineteen Eighty-Four" expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell's essay "Notes on Nationalism" about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomena behind certain political forces. In "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the Party's artificial, minimalist language 'Newspeak' addresses the matter.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: O'Brien concludes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: One of the most notable themes in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of "unpersons" (people who have been erased from history by the Party). On the telescreens, almost all figures of production are grossly exaggerated or simply fabricated to indicate an ever-growing economy, even during times when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is Winston being charged with the task of eliminating a reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He also proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a made-up party member who allegedly "displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In Oceania, the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy. All of their houses and apartments are equipped with telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents. Citizens are controlled, and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a suspicious facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens are compelled to obedience.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: According to Goldstein's book, almost the entire world lives in poverty; hunger, thirst, disease, and filth are the norms. Ruined cities and towns are common: the consequence of perpetual wars and extreme economic inefficiency. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministries' headquarters, little of London was rebuilt. Middle class citizens and proles consume synthetic foodstuffs and poor-quality "luxuries" such as oily gin and loosely-packed cigarettes, distributed under the "Victory" brand, a parody of the low-quality Indian-made "Victory" cigarettes, which British soldiers commonly smoked during World War II.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Winston describes something as simple as the repair of a broken window as requiring committee approval that can take several years and so most of those living in one of the blocks usually do the repairs themselves (Winston himself is called in by Mrs. Parsons to repair her blocked sink). All upper-class and middle-class residences include telescreens that serve both as outlets for propaganda and surveillance devices that allow the Thought Police to monitor them; they can be turned down, but the ones in middle-class residences cannot be turned off.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In contrast to their subordinates, the upper class of Oceanian society reside in clean and comfortable flats in their own quarters, with pantries well-stocked with foodstuffs such as wine, real coffee, real tea, real milk, and real sugar, all denied to the general populace. Winston is astonished that the lifts in O'Brien's building work, the telescreens can be completely turned off, and O'Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin. All upper class citizens are attended to by slaves captured in the "disputed zone", and "The Book" suggests that many have their own cars or even helicopters.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: However, despite their insulation and overt privileges, the upper class are still not exempt from the government's brutal restriction of thought and behaviour, even while lies and propaganda apparently originate from their own ranks. Instead, the Oceanian government offers the upper class their "luxuries" in exchange for them maintaining their loyalty to the state; non-conformant upper-class citizens can still be condemned, tortured, and executed just like any other individual. "The Book" makes clear that the upper class' living conditions are only "relatively" comfortable, and would be regarded as "austere" by those of the pre-revolutionary élite.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The proles live in poverty and are kept sedated with pornography, a national lottery whose winnings are rarely paid out, which fact is obscured by propaganda and the lack of communication within Oceania, and gin, "which the proles were not supposed to drink". At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the upper classes: they are not expected to be particularly patriotic and the levels of surveillance that they are subjected to are very low. They lack telescreens in their own homes and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book" indicates that because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions, the model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they are deemed to lack intellect. Winston nonetheless believes that "the future belonged to the proles".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The standard of living of the populace is extremely low overall. Consumer goods are scarce, and those available through official channels are of low quality; for instance, despite the Party regularly reporting increased boot production, more than half of the Oceanian populace goes barefoot. The Party claims that poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort, and "The Book" confirms that to be partially correct since the purpose of perpetual war is to consume surplus industrial production. As "The Book" explains, society is in fact designed to remain on the brink of starvation, as "In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: "Nineteen Eighty-Four" uses themes from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs. Some time at an unspecified date after the first American publication of the book, producer Sidney Sheldon wrote to Orwell interested in adapting the novel to the Broadway stage. Orwell wrote in a letter to Sheldon (to whom he would sell the US stage rights) that his basic goal with "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was imagining the consequences of Stalinist government ruling British society:


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: ["Nineteen Eighty-Four"] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: According to Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor, the author's "A Clergyman's Daughter" (1935) has "essentially the same plot of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" ... It's about somebody who is spied upon, and eavesdropped upon, and oppressed by vast exterior forces they can do nothing about. It makes an attempt at rebellion and then has to compromise".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The statement "2 + 2 = 5", used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a communist party slogan from the second five-year plan, which encouraged fulfilment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards and elsewhere.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The switch of Oceania's allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia and the subsequent rewriting of history ("Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete"; ch 9) is evocative of the Soviet Union's changing relations with Nazi Germany. The two nations were open and frequently vehement critics of each other until the signing of the 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression. Thereafter, and continuing until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped—including in the majority of non-Russian communist parties who tended to follow the Russian line. Orwell had criticised the Communist Party of Great Britain for supporting the Treaty in his essays for "Betrayal of the Left" (1941). "The Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 reversed the Soviet Union's stated foreign policy. It was too much for many of the fellow-travellers like Gollancz [Orwell's sometime publisher] who had put their faith in a strategy of construction Popular Front governments and the peace bloc between Russia, Britain and France."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a "small, goatee beard", evokes the image of Leon Trotsky. The film of Goldstein during the Two Minutes Hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating sheep. This image was used in a propaganda film during the Kino-eye period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat. Like Goldstein, Trotsky was a formerly high-ranking party official who was ostracized and then wrote a book criticizing party rule, "The Revolution Betrayed", published in 1936.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The omnipresent images of Big Brother, a man described as having a moustache, bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The news in Oceania emphasized production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by "Heroes of Socialist Labour") was especially glorified. The best known of these was Alexey Stakhanov, who purportedly set a record for coal mining in 1935.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the NKVD in their interrogations, including the use of rubber truncheons, being forbidden to put your hands in your pockets, remaining in brightly lit rooms for days, torture through the use of their greatest fear, and the victim being shown a mirror after their physical collapse.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the area bombing of London by Buzz bombs and the V-2 rocket in 1944–1945.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Thought Police is based on the NKVD, which arrested people for random "anti-soviet" remarks. The Thought Crime motif is drawn from Kempeitai, the Japanese wartime secret police, who arrested people for "unpatriotic" thoughts.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford, Aaronson, and Jones are based on the show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The song "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me") was based on an old English song called "Go no more a-rushing" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree."). The song was published as early as 1891. The song was a popular camp song in the 1920s, sung with corresponding movements (like touching one's chest when singing "chest", and touching one's head when singing "nut"). Glenn Miller recorded the song in 1939.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate), but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October revolution (Hate Week).


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Orwell fictionalised "newspeak", "doublethink", and "Ministry of Truth" based on both the Soviet press, and British wartime usage, such as "Miniform". In particular, he adapted Soviet ideological discourse constructed to ensure that public statements could not be questioned.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Winston Smith's job, "revising history" (and the "unperson" motif) are based on censorship of images in the Soviet Union, which airbrushed images of "fallen" people from group photographs and removed references to them in books and newspapers. In one well-known example, the second edition of the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" had an article about Lavrentiy Beria. After his fall from power and execution, subscribers received a letter from the editor instructing them to cut out and destroy the three-page article on Beria and paste in its place enclosed replacement pages expanding the adjacent articles on F. W. Bergholz (an 18th-century courtier), the Bering Sea, and Bishop Berkeley.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Big Brother's "Orders of the Day" were inspired by Stalin's regular wartime orders, called by the same name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as "On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union" By Joseph Stalin. Like Big Brother's Orders of the day, Stalin's frequently lauded heroic individuals, like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith invented to "rectify" (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The Ingsoc slogan "Our new, happy life", repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin's 1935 statement, which became a CPSU slogan, "Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In 1940, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", which describes the invention by a "benevolent secret society" of a world that would seek to remake human language and reality along human-invented lines. The story concludes with an appendix describing the success of the project. Borges' story addresses similar themes of epistemology, language and history to 1984.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: During World War II, Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war. The question being "Would it end via Fascist "coup d'état" from above or via Socialist revolution from below?" Later, he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949) and "Animal Farm" (1945) share themes of the betrayed revolution, the individual's subordination to the collective, rigorously enforced class distinctions (Inner Party, Outer Party, proles), the cult of personality, concentration camps, Thought Police, compulsory regimented daily exercise, and youth leagues. Oceania resulted from the US annexation of the British Empire to counter the Asian peril to Australia and New Zealand. It is a naval power whose militarism venerates the sailors of the floating fortresses, from which battle is given to recapturing India, the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. Much of Oceanic society is based upon the USSR under Joseph Stalin—Big Brother. The televised Two Minutes Hate is ritual demonisation of the enemies of the State, especially Emmanuel Goldstein ("viz" Leon Trotsky). Altered photographs and newspaper articles create unpersons deleted from the national historical record, including even founding members of the regime (Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford) in the 1960s purges ("viz" the Soviet Purges of the 1930s, in which leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were similarly treated). A similar thing also happened during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in which many of the original leaders of the Revolution were later put to death, for example Danton who was put to death by Robespierre, and then later Robespierre himself met the same fate.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in "Homage to Catalonia" (1938) and "Animal Farm" (1945), while "Coming Up for Air" (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949). Biographer Michael Shelden notes Orwell's Edwardian childhood at Henley-on-Thames as the golden country; being bullied at St Cyprian's School as his empathy with victims; his life in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and the techniques of violence and censorship in the BBC as capricious authority.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Other influences include "Darkness at Noon" (1940) and "The Yogi and the Commissar" (1945) by Arthur Koestler; "The Iron Heel "(1908) by Jack London; "1920: Dips into the Near Future" by John A. Hobson; "Brave New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley; "We" (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin which he reviewed in 1946; and "The Managerial Revolution" (1940) by James Burnham predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told Jacintha Buddicom that he would write a novel stylistically like "A Modern Utopia" (1905) by H. G. Wells.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Extrapolating from World War II, the novel's pastiche parallels the politics and rhetoric at war's end—the changed alliances at the "Cold War's" (1945–91) beginning; the Ministry of Truth derives from the BBC's overseas service, controlled by the Ministry of Information; Room 101 derives from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House; the Senate House of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the US, i.e., the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became Eurasia.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The term "English Socialism" has precedents in Orwell's wartime writings; in the essay "" (1941), he said that "the war and the revolution are inseparable... the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy"—because Britain's superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat Adolf Hitler. Given the middle class's grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which "will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In the world of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "English Socialism" (or "Ingsoc" in Newspeak) is a totalitarian ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" with "Nineteen Eighty-Four" shows that he perceived a Big Brother regime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve "into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: When it was first published, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" received critical acclaim. V. S. Pritchett, reviewing the novel for the "New Statesman" stated: "I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down." P. H. Newby, reviewing "Nineteen Eighty-Four" for "The Listener" magazine, described it as "the most arresting political novel written by an Englishman since Rex Warner's "The Aerodrome."" "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was also praised by Bertrand Russell, E. M. Forster and Harold Nicolson. On the other hand, Edward Shanks, reviewing "Nineteen Eighty-Four" for "The Sunday Times", was dismissive; Shanks claimed "Nineteen Eighty-Four" "breaks all records for gloomy vaticination". C. S. Lewis was also critical of the novel, claiming that the relationship of Julia and Winston, and especially the Party's view on sex, lacked credibility, and that the setting was "odious rather than tragic".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: On 5 November 2019, the BBC named "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on its list of the 100 most influential novels.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: According to Czesław Miłosz, an exile from Stalinist Poland, the book also made an impression behind the Iron Curtain. Writing in "The Captive Mind", he stated "[a] few have become acquainted with Orwell's "1984"; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well [...] Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life." Writer Christopher Hitchens has called this "one of the greatest compliments that one writer has ever bestowed upon another [...] Only one or two years after Orwell's death, in other words, his book about a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party was itself a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In the same year as the novel's publishing, a one-hour radio adaptation was aired on the United States' NBC radio network as part of the "NBC University Theatre" series. The first television adaptation appeared as part of CBS's "Studio One" series in September 1953. BBC Television broadcast an adaptation by Nigel Kneale in December 1954. The first feature film adaptation, "1984", was released in 1956. A second feature-length adaptation, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," followed in 1984, a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel. The story has been adapted several other times to radio, television, and film; other media adaptations include theater (a musical and a play), opera, and ballet.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The first Simplified Chinese version was published in 1979. It was first available to the general public in China in 1985, as previously it was only in portions of libraries and bookstores open to a limited number of people. Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of "The Atlantic" stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in Mainland China for several reasons: the general public by and large no longer reads books; because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway; and because the Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated "It was—and remains—as easy to buy "1984" and "Animal Farm" in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles." They also stated that "The assumption is not that Chinese people can’t figure out the meaning of 1984, but that the small number of people who will bother to read it won’t pose much of a threat."


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: By 1989, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" had been translated into 65 languages, more than any other novel in English at that time.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The effect of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of "doublethink", and the adjective "Orwellian" means similar to Orwell's writings, especially "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The practice of ending words with (such as "mediaspeak") is drawn from the novel. Orwell is perpetually associated with 1984; in July 1984, an asteroid was discovered by Antonín Mrkos and named after Orwell.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: References to the themes, concepts and plot of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example is the worldwide hit reality television show "Big Brother", in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: The book touches on the invasion of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. From mid-2013 it was publicised that the NSA has been secretly monitoring and storing global internet traffic, including the bulk data collection of email and phone call data. Sales of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" increased by up to seven times within the first week of the 2013 mass surveillance leaks. The book again topped the Amazon.com sales charts in 2017 after a controversy involving Kellyanne Conway using the phrase "alternative facts" to explain discrepancies with the media.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was number three on the list of "Top Check Outs Of All Time" by the New York Public Library.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In accordance with copyright law, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm" both entered the public domain on 1 January 2021 in most of the world, 70 calendar years after Orwell died. The US copyright expiration is different for both novels: 95 years after publication.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In October 1949, after reading "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Huxley sent a letter to Orwell in which he argued that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to seek pleasure to control them rather than use brute force. He wrote


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: In the decades since the publication of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", there have been numerous comparisons to Huxley's "Brave New World", which had been published 17 years earlier, in 1932. They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government and are both based on extensions of the trends of their times. However, members of the ruling class of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" use brutal force, torture and mind control to keep individuals in line, while rulers in "Brave New World" keep the citizens in line by drugs and pleasurable distractions. Regarding censorship, in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" the government tightly controls information to keep the population in line, but in Huxley's world, so much information is published that readers do not know which information is relevant, and what can be disregarded.


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Elements of both novels can be seen in modern-day societies, with Huxley's vision being more dominant in the West and Orwell's vision more prevalent with dictatorships, including those in communist countries (such as in modern-day China and North Korea), as is pointed out in essays that compare the two novels, including Huxley's own "Brave New World Revisited".


title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

text: Comparisons with later dystopian novels like "The Handmaid's Tale", "Virtual Light", "The Private Eye" and "The Children of Men" have also been drawn.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 after India had become a republic. It was a successor to the United Provinces (UP) during the period of the Dominion of India (1947–1950), which in turn was a successor to the United Provinces (UP) established in 1935, and eventually of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh established in 1902 during the British Raj. The state is divided into 18 divisions and 75 districts, with the state capital being Lucknow, and Prayagraj serving as the judicial capital. On 9 November 2000, a new state, Uttaranchal (now Uttarakhand), was created from Uttar Pradesh's western Himalayan hill region. The two major rivers of the state, the Ganges and its tributary Yamuna, meet at the Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj, a Hindu pilgrimage site. Other notable rivers are Gomti and Saryu. The forest cover in the state is 6.1 per cent of the state's geographical area. The cultivable area is 82 per cent of total geographical area and net area sown is 68.5 per cent of cultivable area.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the west, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi to the northwest, Uttarakhand and an international border with Nepal to the north, Bihar to the east, Madhya Pradesh to the south, and touches the states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to the southeast. It covers , equal to 7.3% of the total area of India, and is the fourth-largest Indian state by area. Though long known for sugar production, the state's economy is now dominated by the services industry. The service sector comprises travel and tourism, hotel industry, real estate, insurance and financial consultancies. The economy of Uttar Pradesh is the third-largest state economy in India with in gross domestic product and a per capita GSDP of . President's rule has been imposed in Uttar Pradesh ten times since 1968, for different reasons and for a total of 1,700 days. The state has currently three international airports, Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport (Lucknow), Lal Bahadur Shastri Airport (Varanasi) and Kushinagar International Airport (Kushinagar). Allahabad Junction is the headquarters of the North Central Railway and Gorakhpur Railway Station serves as the headquarters of the North Eastern Railway. The High Court of the state is located in Allahabad. The state contributes 80 seats and 31 seats to the lower house Lok Sabha and the upper house Rajya Sabha, respectively.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Inhabitants of the state are called either Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhojpuri, Braji, Bundeli, Kannauji, or Rohilkhandi depending upon their region of origin. Hinduism is practised by more than three-fourths of the population, with Islam being the next largest religious group. Hindi is the most widely spoken language and is also the official language of the state, along with Urdu. Bhojpuri is the second most widely spoken language of the state after Hindi. Uttar Pradesh was home to most of the mainstream political entities that have existed in ancient and medieval India including the Maurya Empire, Harsha Empire, Gupta Empire, Pala Empire, Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire as well as many other empires. At the time of Indian independence movement in the early 20th century, there were three major princely states in Uttar Pradesh – Ramgadi, Rampur and Benares. The state houses several holy Hindu temples and pilgrimage centres. Uttar Pradesh has three World Heritage sites and ranks first among tourist destinations in India. Uttar Pradesh has several historical, natural, and religious tourist destinations, including Agra, Aligarh, Ayodhya, Kushinagar, Prayagraj, Varanasi and Vrindavan.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Modern human hunter-gatherers have been in Uttar Pradesh since between around 85,000 and 72,000 years ago. There have also been prehistorical finds in Uttar Pradesh from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic dated to 21,000–31,000 years old and Mesolithic/Microlithic hunter-gatherer settlement, near Pratapgarh, from around 10550–9550 BCE. Villages with domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats and evidence of agriculture began as early as 6000 BCE, and gradually developed between c. 4000 and 1500 BCE  beginning with the Indus Valley civilisation and Harappa culture to the Vedic period and extending into the Iron Age.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Out of the sixteen "mahajanapadas" (lit. 'great realms') or oligarchic republics that existed in ancient India, seven fell entirely within the present-day boundaries of Uttar Pradesh. The kingdom of Kosala, in the Mahajanapada era, was also located within the regional boundaries of modern-day Uttar Pradesh. According to Hinduism, the divine King Rama of the Ramayana epic reigned in Ayodhya, the capital of Kosala. Krishna, another divine king of Hindu legend, who plays a key role in the Mahabharata epic and is revered as the eighth reincarnation (Avatar) of the Hindu god Vishnu, is said to have been born in the city of Mathura, in Uttar Pradesh. The aftermath of the Mahabharata yuddh is believed to have taken place in the area between the Upper Doab and Delhi, (in what was Kuru Mahajanapada), during the reign of the Pandava King Yudhishthira. The kingdom of the Kurus corresponds to the Black and Red Ware and Painted Gray Ware culture and the beginning of the Iron Age in northwest India, around 1000 BCE.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Control over Gangetic plains region was of vital importance to the power and stability of all of India's major empires, including the Maurya (320–200 BCE), Kushan (100–250 CE), Gupta (350–600), and Gurjara-Pratihara (650–1036) empires. Following the Huns' invasions that broke the Gupta empire, the Ganges-Yamuna Doab saw the rise of Kannauj. During the reign of Harshavardhana (590–647), the Kannauj empire reached its zenith. It spanned from Punjab in the north and Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east and Odisha in the south. It included parts of central India, north of the Narmada River and it encompassed the entire Indo-Gangetic plain. Many communities in various parts of India claim descent from the migrants of Kannauj. Soon after Harshavardhana's death, his empire disintegrated into many kingdoms, which were invaded and ruled by the Gurjara-Pratihara empire, which challenged Bengal's Pala Empire for control of the region. Kannauj was several times invaded by the south Indian Rashtrakuta Dynasty, from the 8th century to the 10th century. After the fall of the Pala empire, the Chero dynasty ruled from the 12th century to the 18th century.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Parts or all of Uttar Pradesh was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate for 320 years (1206–1526). Five dynasties ruled over the Delhi Sultanate sequentially: the Mamluk dynasty (1206–90), the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414), the Sayyid dynasty (1414–51), and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526).


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: In the 16th century, Babur, a Timurid descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan from Fergana Valley (modern-day Uzbekistan), swept across the Khyber Pass and founded the Mughal Empire, covering India, along with modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Mughals were descended from Persianised Central Asian Turks (with significant Mongol admixture). In the Mughal era, Uttar Pradesh became the heartland of the empire. Mughal emperors Babur and Humayun ruled from Delhi. In 1540 an Afghan, Sher Shah Suri, took over the reins of Uttar Pradesh after defeating the Mughal King Humanyun. Sher Shah and his son Islam Shah ruled Uttar Pradesh from their capital at Gwalior. After the death of Islam Shah Suri, his prime minister Hemu became the "de facto" ruler of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and the western parts of Bengal. He was bestowed the title of "Hemchandra Vikramaditya" (title of Vikramāditya adopted from Vedic Period) at his formal coronation took place at Purana Quila in Delhi on 7 October 1556. A month later, Hemu died in the Second Battle of Panipat, and Uttar Pradesh came under Emperor Akbar's rule. Akbar ruled from Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. In the 18th century, after the fall of Mughal authority, the power vacuum was filled by the Maratha Empire, in the mid-18th century, the Maratha army invaded the Uttar Pradesh region, which resulted in Rohillas losing control of Rohilkhand to the Maratha forces led by Raghunath Rao and Malharao Holkar. The conflict between Rohillas and Marathas came to an end on 18 December 1788 with the arrest of Ghulam Qadir, the grandson of Najeeb-ud-Daula, who was defeated by the Maratha general Mahadaji Scindia. In 1803–04, following the Second Anglo-Maratha War, when the British East India Company defeated the Maratha Empire, much of the region came under British suzerainty.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Starting from Bengal in the second half of the 18th century, a series of battles for north Indian lands finally gave the British East India Company accession over the state's territories. Ajmer and Jaipur kingdoms were also included in this northern territory, which was named the "North-Western Provinces" (of Agra). Although UP later became the fifth-largest state of India, NWPA was one of the smallest states of the British Indian empire. Its capital shifted twice between Agra and Allahabad.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Due to dissatisfaction with British rule, a serious rebellion erupted in various parts of North India, which became known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857; Bengal regiment's sepoy stationed at Meerut cantonment, Mangal Pandey, is widely considered as its starting point. After the revolt failed, the British divided the most rebellious regions by reorganising their administrative boundaries, splitting the Delhi region from 'NWFP of Agra' and merging it with Punjab, while the Ajmer–Marwar region was merged with Rajputana and Oudh was incorporated into the state. The new state was called the North Western Provinces of Agra and Oudh, which in 1902 was renamed as the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It was commonly referred to as the United Provinces or its acronym UP.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: In 1920, the capital of the province was shifted from Allahabad to Lucknow. The high court continued to be at Prayagraj, but a bench was established at Lucknow. Prayagraj continues to be an important administrative base of today's Uttar Pradesh and has several administrative headquarters. Uttar Pradesh continued to be central to Indian politics and was especially important in modern Indian history as a hotbed of the Indian independence movement. Uttar Pradesh hosted modern educational institutions such as the Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University and Darul Uloom Deoband. Nationally known figures such as Ram Prasad Bismil and Chandra Shekhar Azad were among the leaders of the movement in Uttar Pradesh, and Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Gobind Ballabh Pant were important national leaders of the Indian National Congress. The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was formed at the Lucknow session of the Congress on 11 April 1936, with the famous nationalist Swami Sahajanand Saraswati elected as its first President, in order to address the longstanding grievances of the peasantry and mobilise them against the zamindari landlords attacks on their occupancy rights, thus sparking the Farmers movements in India. During the Quit India Movement of 1942, Ballia district overthrew the colonial authority and installed an independent administration under Chittu Pandey. Ballia became known as "Baghi Ballia" (Rebel Ballia) for this significant role in India's independence movement.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: After India's independence, the United Provinces were renamed "Uttar Pradesh" ("northern province"), preserving UP as the acronym, with the change coming into effect on 24 January 1950. The state has provided nine of India's prime ministers, including current Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is MP from Varanasi, which is more than any other state and is the source of the largest number of seats in the Lok Sabha. Despite its political influence since ancient times, its poor record in economic development and administration, poor governance, organised crime and corruption have kept it among India's backward states. The state has been affected by repeated episodes of caste and communal violence. In Ayodhya in December 1992 the disputed Babri Mosque was demolished by radical Hindu activists, leading to widespread violence across India. In 2000, northern districts of the state were separated to form the state of Uttarakhand.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh, with a total area of , is India's fourth-largest state in terms of land area and is roughly of same size as United Kingdom. It is situated on the northern spout of India and shares an international boundary with Nepal. The Himalayas border the state on the north, but the plains that cover most of the state are distinctly different from those high mountains. The larger Gangetic Plain region is in the north; it includes the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, the Ghaghra plains, the Ganges plains and the Terai. The smaller Vindhya Range and plateau region are in the south. It is characterised by hard rock strata and a varied topography of hills, plains, valleys and plateaus. The Bhabhar tract gives place to the terai area which is covered with tall elephant grass and thick forests interspersed with marshes and swamps. The sluggish rivers of the bhabhar deepen in this area, their course running through a tangled mass of thick undergrowth. The terai runs parallel to the bhabhar in a thin strip. The entire alluvial plain is divided into three sub-regions. The first in the eastern tract consisting of 14 districts which are subject to periodical floods and droughts and have been classified as scarcity areas. These districts have the highest density of population which gives the lowest per capita land. The other two regions, the central and the western, are comparatively better with a well-developed irrigation system. They suffer from waterlogging and large-scale user tracts. In addition, the area is fairly arid. The state has more than 32 large and small rivers; of them, the Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, Sarayu, Betwa, and Ghaghara are larger and of religious importance in Hinduism.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Cultivation is intensive in the state. Uttar Pradesh falls under three agro-climatic zones viz. Middle Gangetic Plains region (Zone–IV), Upper Gangetic Plains region (Zone–V) and Central Plateau and Hills region (Zone–VIII). The valley areas have fertile and rich soil. There is intensive cultivation on terraced hill slopes, but irrigation facilities are deficient. The Siwalik Range which forms the southern foothills of the Himalayas, slopes down into a boulder bed called 'bhabhar'. The transitional belt running along the entire length of the state is called the terai and bhabhar area. It has rich forests, cutting across it are innumerable streams which swell into raging torrents during the monsoon.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has a humid subtropical climate and experiences four seasons. The winter in January and February is followed by summer between March and May and the monsoon season between June and September. Summers are extreme with temperatures fluctuating anywhere between 0 °C and 50 °C in parts of the state coupled with dry hot winds called the "Loo". The Gangetic plain varies from semiarid to sub-humid. The mean annual rainfall ranges from 650 mm in the southwest corner of the state to 1000 mm in the eastern and south eastern parts of the state. Primarily a summer phenomenon, the Bay of Bengal branch of the Indian monsoon is the major bearer of rain in most parts of state. After summer it is the southwest monsoon which brings most of the rain here, while in winters rain due to the "western disturbances" and north-east monsoon also contribute small quantities towards the overall precipitation of the state.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The rain in Uttar Pradesh can vary from an annual average of 170 cm in hilly areas to 84 cm in Western Uttar Pradesh. Given the concentration of most of this rainfall in the four months of the monsoon, excess rain can lead to floods and shortage to droughts. As such, these two phenomena, floods and droughts, commonly recur in the state. The climate of the Vindhya Range and plateau is subtropical with a mean annual rainfall between 1000 and 1200 mm, most of which comes during the monsoon. Typical summer months are from March to June, with maximum temperatures ranging from . There is a low relative humidity of around 20% and dust-laden winds blow throughout the season. In summer, hot winds called "loo" blow all across Uttar Pradesh.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state has an abundance of natural resources. In 2011 the recorded forest area in the state was which is about 6.9% of the state's geographical area. In spite of rapid deforestation and poaching of wildlife, a diverse flora and fauna continue to exist in the state. Species in the state with respect to India, Uttar Pradesh is a habitat for 4.2% of all Algae, 6.4% of Fungi, 6.0% of Lichens, 2.9% of Bryophytes, 3.3% of Pteridophytes, 8.7% of Gymnosperms, 8.1% of Angiosperms. Several species of trees, large and small mammals, reptiles, and insects are found in the belt of temperate upper mountainous forests. Medicinal plants are found in the wild and are also grown in plantations. The Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands support cattle. Moist deciduous trees grow in the upper Gangetic plain, especially along its riverbanks. This plain supports a wide variety of plants and animals. The Ganges and its tributaries are the habitat of large and small reptiles, amphibians, fresh-water fish, and crabs. Scrubland trees such as the Babool ("Vachellia nilotica") and animals such as the Chinkara ("Gazella bennettii") are found in the arid Vindhyas. Notable indigenous trees are the astringent "Azadirachta indica", or "neem", which is widely used in rural Indian herbal medicine and the luxuriant "Ficus religiosa", or "peepul", consider the tree to be sacred by Hindu and Jain ascetics as this is the tree under which Gautama Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Tropical dry deciduous forests are found in all parts of the plains. Since much sunlight reaches the ground, shrubs and grasses are also abundant. Large tracts of these forests have been cleared for cultivation. Tropical thorny forests, consisting of widely scattered thorny trees, mainly babool are mostly found in the southwestern parts of the state. These forests are confined to areas which have low annual rainfall (50–70 cm), a mean annual temperature of 25–27 °C and low humidity.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh is known for its extensive avifauna. The most common birds which are found in the state are doves, peafowl, junglefowl, black partridges, house sparrows, songbirds, blue jays, parakeets, quails, bulbuls, comb ducks, kingfishers, woodpeckers, snipes, and parrots. Bird sanctuaries in the state include Bakhira Sanctuary, National Chambal Sanctuary, Chandra Prabha Sanctuary, Hastinapur Sanctuary, Kaimoor Sanctuary, and Okhla Sanctuary.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Other animals in the state include reptiles such as lizards, cobras, kraits, and gharials. Among the wide variety of fishes, the most common ones are mahaseer and trout. Some animal species in Uttar Pradesh have gone extinct in recent years, while others, like the lion from the Gangetic Plain, the rhinoceros from the Terai region, Ganges river dolphin primarily found in the Ganges have become endangered. Many species are vulnerable to poaching despite regulation by the government.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The following is a list of top districts from state of Uttar Pradesh by population, ranked in respect of all India.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Each district is governed by a District Magistrate, who is an Indian Administrative Service officer appointed Government of Uttar Pradesh and reports to Divisional Commissioner of the division in which his district falls. The Divisional Commissioner is an IAS officer of high seniority. Each district is divided into subdivisions, governed by a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, and again into Blocks. Blocks consists of panchayats (village councils) and town municipalities. These blocks consists of urban units viz. census towns and rural units called gram panchayat.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has more metropolitan cities than any other state in India. The absolute urban population of the state is 44.4 million, which constitutes 11.8% of the total urban population of India, the second-highest of any state. According to the 2011 census, there are 15 urban agglomerations with a population greater than 500,000. There are 14 Municipal Corporations, while Noida and Greater Noida in Gautam Budh Nagar district are specially administered by statutory authorities under the Uttar Pradesh Industrial Development Act, 1976.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: In 2011, state's cabinet ministers headed by the then Chief Minister Mayawati announced the separation of Uttar Pradesh into four different states of Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Avadh Pradesh and Paschim Pradesh with twenty-eight, seven, twenty-three and seventeen districts, respectively, later the proposal was turned down when Akhilesh Yadav lead Samajwadi Party came to power in the 2012 election.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has a large population and a high population growth rate. From 1991 to 2001 its population increased by over 26%. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India, with 199,581,477 people on 1 March 2011. The state contributes to 16.2% of India's population. The population density is 828 people per square kilometre, making it one of the most densely populated states in the country. Uttar Pradesh has the largest scheduled caste population whereas scheduled tribes are less than 1 per cent of the total population.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The sex ratio in 2011, at 912 women to 1000 men, was lower than the national figure of 943. The state's 2001–2011 decennial growth rate (including Uttrakhand) was 20.1%, higher than the national rate of 17.64%. Uttar Pradesh has a large number of people living below the poverty line. As per World Bank document (released in 2016), the pace of poverty reduction in the state has been slower than the rest of the country. Estimates released by the Reserve Bank of India for the year 2011–12 revealed that Uttar Pradesh had 59 million (598.19 lakh) people below the poverty line, the most for any state in India. The central and eastern districts in particular have very high levels of poverty. The state is also experiencing widening consumption inequality. As per the report of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (released on 7 January 2020), the state per capita income is below per annum.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: As per 2011 census, Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, is home to the highest numbers of both Hindus and Muslims. By religion, the population in 2011 was Hindus 79.7%, Muslims 19.3%, Sikhs 0.3%, Christians 0.2%, Jains 0.1%, Buddhists 0.1%, and others 0.3%. The literacy rate of the state at the 2011 census was 67.7%, which was below the national average of 74%. The literacy rate for men is 79% and for women 59%. In 2001 the literacy rate in Uttar Pradesh stood at 56% overall, 67% for men and 43% for women. A report based on a National Statistical Office (NSO) survey reveals that Uttar Pradesh's literacy rate is 73%—less than the national average of 77.7%. According to the report, in the rural region, the literacy rate among men is 80.5% and women is 60.4%, while in urban areas, the literacy rate among men is 86.8% and women is 74.9%.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Hindi is the official language of Uttar Pradesh and is spoken by the majority of the population (80.16%). Bhojpuri is the second most spoken language of the state, it is spoken by almost 11% of the population. Most people speak regional languages classified as dialects of Hindi in the census. These include Awadhi spoken in Awadh in central Uttar Pradesh, Bhojpuri spoken in Purvanchal in eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Braj Bhasha spoken in the Braj region in Western Uttar Pradesh. Urdu is given the status of a second official language, spoken by 5.4% of the population. Other notable languages spoken in the state include Punjabi (0.3%) and Bengali (0.1%).


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state is governed by a parliamentary system of representative democracy. Uttar Pradesh is one of the seven states in India, where the state legislature is bicameral, comprising two houses: the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) and the Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council). The Legislative Assembly consists of 404 members who are elected for five-year terms. The Legislative Council is a permanent body of 100 members with one-third (33 members) retiring every two years. Since Uttar Pradesh sends the largest number of legislators to the national Parliament, it is often considered to be one of the most important states with respect to Indian politics. The state contributes 80 seats to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, Lok Sabha and 31 seats to the upper house of the Indian Parliament, Rajya Sabha.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh government is a democratically elected body in India with the Governor as its constitutional head and is appointed by the President of India for a five-year term. The leader of the party or coalition with a majority in the Legislative Assembly is appointed as the Chief Minister by the Governor, and the Council of Ministers are appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister. The governor remains a ceremonial head of the state, while the Chief Minister and his council are responsible for day-to-day government functions. The council of ministers consists of Cabinet Ministers and Ministers of State (MoS). The Secretariat headed by the Chief Secretary assists the council of ministers. The Chief Secretary is also the administrative head of the government. Each government department is headed by a Minister, who is assisted by an Additional Chief Secretary or a Principal Secretary, who is usually an officer of Indian Administrative Service, the Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary serve as the administrative head of the department they are assigned to. Each department also has officers of the rank of Secretary, Special Secretary, Joint Secretary etc. assisting the Minister and the Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: For purpose of administration, the state is divided into 18 divisions and 75 districts. Divisional Commissioner, an IAS officer is the head of administration on the divisional level. The administration in each district is headed by a District Magistrate, who is an IAS officer and is assisted by a number of officers belonging to state services. The Uttar Pradesh Police is headed by an IPS officer of the rank of Director general of police. There are 8 Police Zones, 18 Police Ranges and 75 police districts in the state. An IPS officer in the rank of Inspector General of Police heads the zones, whereas an IPS officer of the rank of Deputy inspector general of police heads the ranges. A Superintendent of Police, an IPS officer and assisted by the officers of the Uttar Pradesh Police Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and related issues in each district.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The judiciary in the state consists of the Allahabad High Court in Allahabad, the Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court, district courts and session courts in each district or Sessions Division, and lower courts at the tehsil level. The President of India appoints the chief justice of the High Court of the Uttar Pradesh judiciary on the advice of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India as well as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. Other judges are appointed by the President of India on the advice of the Chief Justice of the High Court. Subordinate Judicial Service, categorised into two divisions viz. Uttar Pradesh civil judicial services and Uttar Pradesh higher judicial service is another vital part of the judiciary of Uttar Pradesh. While the Uttar Pradesh civil judicial services comprise the Civil Judges (Junior Division)/Judicial Magistrates and civil judges (Senior Division)/Chief Judicial Magistrate, the Uttar Pradesh higher judicial service comprises civil and sessions judges. The Subordinate judicial service (viz. The district court of Etawah and the district court of Kanpur Dehat) of the judiciary at Uttar Pradesh is controlled by the District Judge.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Politics in Uttar Pradesh has been dominated by four political parties, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Indian National Congress, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Politicians from Uttar Pradesh have played prominent roles in Union Government of India with some of them having held the high positions of Prime Minister. Uttar Pradesh has been called India's under-achiever because it has provided India with eight Prime Ministers while remaining a poor state.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: According to the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC), Uttar Pradesh tops the list of states of encounter killings and custodial deaths. In 2014, the state recorded 365 judicial deaths out of a total 1,530 deaths recorded in the country. NHRC further said, of the over 30,000 murders registered in the country in 2016, Uttar Pradesh had 4,889 cases. A data from Minister of Home Affairs (MHA) avers, Bareilly recorded the highest number of custodial death at 25, followed by Agra (21), Allahabad (19) and Varanasi (9). National Crime Records Bureau (2011) data says, Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of crimes among any state in India, but due to its high population, the actual per capita crime rate is low. The state also continues to top the list of states with maximum communal violence incidents. An analysis of Ministers of State of Home Affairs states (2014), 23% of all incidents of communal violence in India took place in Uttar Pradesh. According to a research assembled by State Bank of India, Uttar Pradesh failed to improve its Human Development Index (HDI) ranking over a period of 27 years (1990–2017). Based on sub-national human development index data for Indian states from 1990 to 2017, the report also stated that the value of human development index in Uttar Pradesh has steadily increased over time from 0.39 in 1990 to 0.59 in 2017. The Uttar Pradesh Police, governed by the Department of Home, is the largest police force in the world.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh also reported the highest number of deaths—23,219—due to road and rail accidents in 2015, according to NCRB data. This included 8,109 deaths due to careless driving. Between 2006 and 2010, the state has been hit with three terrorist attacks, including explosions in a landmark holy place, a court and a temple. The 2006 Varanasi bombings were a series of bombings that occurred across the Hindu holy city of Varanasi on 7 March 2006. At least 28 people were killed and as many as 101 others were injured.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: In the afternoon of 23 November 2007, within a span of 25 minutes, six consecutive serial blasts occurred in the Lucknow, Varanasi, and Faizabad courts, in which 28 people were killed and several others injured. The blasts came a week after the Uttar Pradesh police and central security agencies busted Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who had planned to abduct Rahul Gandhi. The Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for these blasts in an email sent to TV stations five minutes before the blast. Another blast occurred on 7 December 2010, the blast occurred at Sheetla Ghat in Varanasi in which more than 38 people were killed and several others injured.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Agriculture is the leading occupation in Uttar Pradesh and plays a vital role in the economic development of the state. In terms of net state domestic product (NSDP), Uttar Pradesh is the second-largest economy in India after Maharashtra, with an estimated gross state domestic product of , and hence contributes 8.4% of India. According to the report generated by India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), in 2014–15, Uttar Pradesh has accounted for 19% share in the country's total food grain output. The state has experienced a high rate of economic growth in the past few years. Food grain production in the state in 2014–15 stood at 47,773.4 thousand tonnes. Wheat is the state's principal food crop and sugarcane is the main commercial crop particularly in Western Uttar Pradesh. About 70% of India's sugar comes from Uttar Pradesh. Sugarcane is the most important cash crop as the state is country's largest producer of sugar. As per the report generated by Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), total sugarcane production in India was estimated to be 28.3 million tonnes in the fiscal ending September 2015 which includes 10.47 million tonnes from Maharashtra and 7.35 million tonnes from Uttar Pradesh


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: State industries are localised in the Kanpur region, the fertile purvanchal lands and the Noida region. The Mughalsarai is home to several major locomotive plants. Major manufacturing products include engineering products, electronics, electrical equipment, cables, steel, leather, textiles, jewellery, frigates, automobiles, railway coaches, and wagons. Meerut is the sports capital of India and also a jewellery hub. More small-scale industrial units is situated in Uttar Pradesh than in any other state, with 12 per cent of over 2.3 million units. With 359 manufacturing clusters, cement is the top sector of SMEs in Uttar Pradesh.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The Uttar Pradesh Financial Corporation (UPFC) was established in the year 1954 under the SFCs Act of 1951 mainly to develop small- and medium-scale industries in the state. The UPFC also provides working capital to existing units with a sound track record and to new units under a single window scheme. In July 2012, due to financial constraints and directions from the state government, lending activities have been suspended except for State Government Schemes. The state has reported total private investment worth over Rs. 25,081 crores during the years of 2012 and 2016. According to a recent report of World Bank on Ease of Doing Business in India, Uttar Pradesh was ranked among the top 10 states and first among Northern states.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: According to the Uttar Pradesh Budget Documents (2019–20), Uttar Pradesh's debt burden is 29.8 per cent of the GSDP. The state's total financial debt stood at in 2011. Uttar Pradesh has not been able to witness double digit economic growth despite consistent attempts over the years. The GSDP is estimated to have grown 7 per cent in 2017–18 and 6.5 per cent in 2018–19 which is about 10 per cent of India's GDP. According to a survey conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), Uttar Pradesh's unemployment rate increased 11.4 percentage points, rising to 21.5 per cent in April 2020. Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of net migrants migrating out of the state. The 2011 census data on migration shows that nearly 14.4 million (14.7%) people had migrated out of Uttar Pradesh. Marriage was cited as the predominant reason for migration among females. Among males the most important reason for migration was Work / Employment.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: In 2009–10, the tertiary sector of the economy (service industries) was the largest contributor to the gross domestic product of the state, contributing 44.8% of the state domestic product compared to 44% from the primary sector (agriculture, forestry, and tourism) and 11.2% from the secondary sector (industrial and manufacturing). MSME sector is the second-largest employment generator in Uttar Pradesh, the first being agriculture and employs over 9.2 million people across the state. Under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh has exceeded 11 five-year plan targets and has established several Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and generated 650,000 employment opportunities across the state. During the 11th five-year plan (2007–2012), the average gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth rate was 7.3%, lower than 15.5%, the average for all states of the country. The state's per capita GSDP was , lower than the national per capita GSDP of . Labour efficiency is higher at an index of 26 than the national average of 25. Textiles and sugar refining, both long-standing industries in Uttar Pradesh, employ a significant proportion of the state's total factory labour. The economy also benefits from the state's tourism industry. The state's exports include footwear, leather goods, and sporting gear.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state is attracting foreign direct investment which has mostly come in the software and electronics fields; Noida, Kanpur and Lucknow are becoming major hubs for the information technology (IT) industry and house the headquarters of most of the major corporate, media and financial institutions. Sonebhadra, a district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has large-scale industries. Its southern region is known as the Energy Capital of India. In May 2013 Uttar Pradesh had the largest number of mobile subscribers in the country, a total of 121.60 million mobile phone connections out of 861.66 million in India, according to the telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). In November 2015, the Ministry of Urban Development selected sixty-one cities of Uttar Pradesh for a comprehensive development program known as the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT). A package of was declared for the cities to develop service level improvement plan (SLIP), a plan for better functioning of the local urban bodies in the cities.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state has the largest railway network in the country but in relative terms has only sixth-highest railway density despite its plain topography and largest population. As of 2011, there were of rail in the state. Allahabad is the headquarters of the North Central Railway and Gorakhpur is the headquarters of the North Eastern Railway. Other than Zonal Headquarters of Allahabad and Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Moradabad serve as divisional Headquarters of the Northern Railway Division. Lucknow Swarna Shatabdi Express, the second fastest shatabdi train, connects the Indian capital of New Delhi to Lucknow while Kanpur Shatabdi Express, connects New Delhi to Kanpur. This was the first train in India to get the new German LHB coaches. The railway stations of Allahabad Junction, Agra Cantt, Lucknow NR, Gorakhpur Junction, Kanpur Central, Mathura Junction and Varanasi Junction are included in the Indian Railways list of 50 world-class railway stations.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state has a large, multimodal transportation system with the largest road network in the country. The state is well connected to its nine neighbouring states and almost all other parts of India through the national highways (NH). It boasts 42 national highways, with a total length of 4,942 km (9.6% of the total NH length in India). The Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation was established in 1972 to provide economical, reliable, and comfortable transportation in the state with connecting services to adjoining states and boasts as being the only State Transport Corporation that runs in profit in the entire nation. All cities are connected to state highways, and all district headquarters are being connected with four lane roads which carry traffic between major centres within the state. One of them is Agra Lucknow Expressway, which is a 302 km (188 mi) controlled-access highway constructed by Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) to reduce vehicular traffic in previously congested roads. This expressway is country's largest Greenfield Expressway which reduced the travel time between Lucknow and Agra from 6 hours to 3.30 hours. Other district roads and village roads provide villages accessibility to meet their social needs as also the means to transport agriculture produce from village to nearby markets. Major district roads provide a secondary function of linking between main roads and rural roads. Uttar Pradesh has the highest road density in India, (1,027 km per 1000 km) and the largest surfaced urban-road network in the country (50,721 km).


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The state has two international airports located in Lucknow (Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport) and Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport in Varanasi. and six domestic airports located at Agra, Allahabad, Bareilly, Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur and Kanpur. The Lucknow Airport is the second-busiest airport in North India after the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. The state has also proposed creating the Taj International Airport at Kurikupa near Hirangaon, Tundla in Firozabad district. Two more international airports have been proposed to be built at Kushinagar and Jewar, Greater Noida. The Lucknow Metro and Kanpur Metro (Orange line) has been operational since 9 March 2019 and 28 December 2021 respectively. The state's cities are witnessing a swift rise in the number of immigrants and this has called for the transformation of public modes of transport.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: A project was announced in 2014 to make regions of the state bicycle-friendly. The work began in 2014 with a project in Lucknow, planning to give the city the largest cycle path network in India by 2016, covering up to 270 kilometres. The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, visited Amsterdam in September 2014 and observed that cycling was a common mode of transportation in the Netherlands. He then instructed officials in Uttar Pradesh to plan cycling corridors in order to take a greener approach to transportation. The first cycle track in Lucknow was inaugurated at Kalidas Marg on 1 March 2015. A 35-km-stretch costing ₹310 million has been constructed in Lucknow, while another 31 km, estimated to cost ₹340 million, was still under construction as of 2015. It was reported in December 2015 that the bike tracks had not been particularly well-received by the public.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Traditional sports, now played mostly as a pastime, include wrestling, swimming, kabaddi, and track-sports or water-sports played according to local traditional rules and without modern equipment. Some sports are designed to display martial skills such as using a sword or 'Pata' (stick). Due to lack of organised patronage and requisite facilities, these sports survive mostly as individuals' hobbies or local competitive events. Among modern sports, field hockey is popular and Uttar Pradesh has produced some of the finest players in India, including Dhyan Chand and, more recently, Nitin Kumar and Lalit Kumar Upadhyay.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Recently, cricket has become more popular than field hockey. Uttar Pradesh won its first Ranji Trophy tournament in February 2006, beating Bengal in the final. It can also boast of routinely having three or four players on the national side. Green Park Stadium in Kanpur, the only internationally recognised cricket stadium in the state, has witnessed some of India's most famous victories. Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association (UPCA) has headquarters in Kanpur. An International Cricket Stadium with a capacity of 50,000 spectators, is being set up in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. Greater Noida Cricket Stadium is another newly built international cricket stadium with a capacity of around 20,000 spectators.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The Buddh International Circuit hosted India's inaugural F1 Grand Prix race on 30 October 2011. The circuit was designed by German architect and racetrack designer Herman Tilke to compete with other world-class race circuits. However, races were only held three times before being cancelled due to falling attendance and lack of government support. The government of Uttar Pradesh considered Formula One to be entertainment and not a sport, and thus imposed taxes on the event and participants.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has a long tradition of education, although historically it was primarily confined to the elite class and religious schools. Sanskrit-based learning formed the major part of education from the Vedic to the Gupta periods. As cultures travelled through the region they brought their bodies of knowledge with them, adding Pali, Persian and Arabic scholarship to the community. These formed the core of Hindu-Buddhist-Muslim education until the rise of British colonialism. The present schools-to-university system of education owes its inception and development in the state (as in the rest of the country) to foreign Christian missionaries and the British colonial administration. Schools in the state are either managed by the government or by private trusts. Hindi is used as a medium of instruction in most of the schools except those affiliated to the CBSE or the Council for ICSE boards. Under the 10+2+3 plan, after completing secondary school, students typically enroll for two years in a junior college, also known as pre-university, or in schools with a higher secondary facility affiliated with the Uttar Pradesh Board of High School and Intermediate Education or a central board. Students choose from one of three streams, namely liberal arts, commerce, or science. Upon completing the required coursework, students may enrol in general or professional degree programs. Some Uttar Pradesh schools, for example Delhi Public School (Noida), La Martinière Girls' College (Lucknow), and Step by Step School (Noida) have been ranked among the best schools in the country.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has more than 45 universities, including 5 central universities, 28 state universities, 8 deemed universities, 2 IITs in Varanasi and Kanpur, AIIMS Gorakhpur and AIIMS Rae Bareli, 1 IIM in Lucknow, 1 NIT in Allahabad, 2 IIITs, 1 National Law University in Lucknow and several polytechnics, engineering colleges and industrial training institutes. Institutes like the Aligarh Muslim University, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), the Indian Institute of Management (Lucknow), Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (Allahabad), Indian Institute of Information Technology (Allahabad), Indian Institute of Information Technology (Lucknow), University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kanpur, King George's Medical University, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow and the Harcourt Butler Technical University are known worldwide for their quality education and research in their respective fields. The presence of such institutions provides the students of the state with ample opportunities for higher education.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: The Integral University, a state level institution, was established by the Uttar Pradesh Government to provide education in different technical, applied science, and other disciplines. The Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies was founded as an autonomous organisation by the national ministry of culture. Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University is the only university established exclusively for the disabled in the world. A large number of Indian scholars are educated at different universities in Uttar Pradesh. Notable scholars who were born, worked or studied in the geographic area of the state include Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Motilal Nehru, Harish Chandra and Indira Gandhi.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh ranks first in domestic tourist arrivals among all states of India with more than 71 million, owing to its rich and varied topography, vibrant culture, festivals, monuments, ancient places of worship, and viharas. Uttar Pradesh is also home to three World Heritage Sites: the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, and the nearby Fatehpur Sikri. Uttar Pradesh is a favoured tourist destination in India due to the location of Taj Mahal, nearly 69 lakhs (6.9 million) people visited the Taj Mahal in 2018–19, up 6% from the previous year when the number stood at 64 lakhs (6.4 million). The monument earned almost in ticket sales in 2018–19. The state's tourism industry is a major contributor to the state's economy, growing at the rate of 21.60%.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Religious tourism plays a significant role in Uttar Pradesh tourism as the state has some of the holiest Hindu shrines. Varanasi a major religious hub, is the holiest of the seven sacred cities ("Sapta Puri") in Hinduism and Jainism. Domestic tourists most commonly visit for religious purposes while foreign tourists visit for ghats along the river Ganges. Vrindavan is considered to be a holy place for Vaisnavism. Owing to the belief as to the birthplace of Rama, Ayodhya (Awadh) has been regarded as one of the seven most important pilgrimage sites. Millions gather at Allahabad to take part in the Magh Mela festival on the banks of the Ganges. This festival is organised on a larger scale every 12th year and is called the Kumbh Mela, where over 10 million Hindu pilgrims congregate in one of the largest gatherings of people in the world. Vindhyachal is a Hindu pilgrimage site having the temple of Vindhyavasini.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Buddhist attractions in Uttar Pradesh include stupas and monasteries. The historically important towns of Sarnath where Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon after his enlightenment and died at Kushinagar; both are important pilgrimage sites for Buddhists. Also at Sarnath are the Pillars of Ashoka and the Lion Capital of Ashoka, both important archaeological artefacts with national significance. At a distance of 80 km from Varanasi, Ghazipur is famous not only for its Ghats on the Ganges but also for the tomb of Lord Cornwallis, the 18th-century Governor of East India Company ruled Bengal Presidency. The tomb is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. The state has one National Park and 25 Wildlife Sanctuaries. Okhla Bird Sanctuary known as a haven for over 300 bird species out of which 160 bird species are migratory, travelling from Tibet, Europe & Siberia and Patna Bird Sanctuary in Etah district, is a major tourist attraction.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Uttar Pradesh has a large public as well as private healthcare infrastructure. Although an extensive network of public and private sector healthcare providers has been built, the available health infrastructure is inadequate to meet the demand for health services in the state. In 15 years to 2012–13, the population of Uttar Pradesh increased by more than 25 per cent. The public health centres, which are the frontline of the government's health care system, decreased by 8 per cent. Smaller sub-centres, the first point of public contact, increased by no more than 2 per cent over the 25 years to 2015, a period when the population grew by more than 51 per cent. The state is also facing challenges such as a shortage of healthcare professionals, increasing cost of healthcare, the mushrooming of private healthcare and a lack of planning. As of 2017, number of government hospital in rural and urban areas of Uttar Pradesh are 4442 (39104 beds) and 193 (37156 beds), respectively.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: A newborn in Uttar Pradesh is expected to live four years fewer than in the neighbouring state of Bihar, five years fewer than in Haryana and seven years fewer than in Himachal Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh contributed to the largest share of almost all communicable and noncommunicable disease deaths, including 48 per cent of all typhoid deaths (2014); 17 per cent of cancer deaths and 18 per cent of tuberculosis deaths (2015). Uttar Pradesh's maternal mortality ratio is higher than the national average at 258 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births (2017), with 62 per cent of pregnant women unable to access minimum ante-natal care. Around 42 per cent of pregnant women, more than 1.5 million, deliver babies at home. About two-thirds (61 per cent) of childbirths at home in Uttar Pradesh are unsafe. State has the highest child mortality indicators, from the neonatal mortality rate (NNMR) to the under-five mortality rate of 64 children who die per 1,000 live births before five years of age, 35 die within a month of birth, and 50 do not complete a year of life. A third of the rural population in the state has been deprived of primary healthcare infrastructure, according to the norms of the Indian Public Health Standards.


title: Uttar Pradesh

text: Several texts and hymns of the Vedic literature were composed in Uttar Pradesh. Renowned Indian writers who have resided in Uttar Pradesh were Kabir, Ravidas, and Tulsidas, who wrote much of his "Ram Charit Manas" in Varanasi. The festival of "Guru Purnima" is dedicated to Sage Vyasa, and also known as "Vyasa Purnima" as it is the day which is believed to be his birthday and also the day he divided the Vedas. There is a long literary and folk Hindi-language tradition in the state. In the 19th and 20th century, Hindi literature was modernised by authors such as Jaishankar Prasad, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Munshi Premchand, Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Babu Gulabrai, Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Agyeya', Rahul Sankrityayan, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Dharamvir Bharati, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Dushyant Kumar, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Acharya Kuber Nath Rai, Bharatendu Harishchandra, Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena, Shivmangal Singh Suman, Mahadevi Varma, and Vibhuti Narain Rai.