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Sitting at the literal geographic heart of India, Madhya Pradesh is the country's 2nd- largest state by area and 5th-largest by population — an agrarian giant that grows more soybean than any other state on Earth's second-most-populous country, and holds more wild tigers than any other Indian state.

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Madhya Pradesh's relative per-capita incomeAverage income per person — total income (often GSDP) divided by population. climbed from 60.1% of the national average in 2010-11 to 77.4% by 2023-24 — one of the sharpest economic turnarounds of any large Indian state in over a decade.

Snapshot

Madhya Pradesh was formed on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act, merging the former Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal State with the Hindi-speaking districts of the old Central Provinces — while ceding its Marathi-speaking Vidarbha region (including Nagpur) to Bombay State. Until 2000, it was India's largest state by area, until the Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act carved out its southeastern districts to form Chhattisgarh, leaving MP as the 2nd-largest state behind Rajasthan. Governance runs through 55 districts organized into 10 administrative divisions (Chapter 03 covers the government structure in full), each headed by a Commissioner, with districts further split into 428 tehsils. Known as the "Heart of India" for its central location and as the "Tiger State" for its wildlife, MP straddles the historic Narmada valley — the traditional dividing line between North and South India — and combines a heavily agrarian economy with growing industrial, mining, and tourism sectors.