1618 languagea,

6400 castes,

6 religion,

6 ethnic groups,

29 major festivals..............

ONE COUNTRY!!!!!!!

Be Proud yo be an INDIAN!!!!!!!!

Happy Independence Day

Agra district is one of the important districts of western Uttar Pradesh which is bounded by Etah and Mathura districts in the North and Firozabad, Mainpuri and Etawah districts in the East and Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in South while the western limit is bounded by the state of Rajasthan. The district lies between 26⁰ 44' to 27⁰ 24' North latitudes and 27⁰ 28' to 78⁰ 54' East longitudes. Its maximum length from west- north to east-south is 125.53 km and from north-east to south-west is 120.70. The extent of the district from north to south is 122.31 km covering total area of 4027.32 km. Agra district comprises 7 tahsils and 15 development blocks.

Agra district is basically a part of Ganga-Yamuna doab which is formed of alluvial or sedimentary deposits of indo-gengetic system of Pleistocene period after a long process of deposit of sediments, as it is the general view of most of the geologists in Tythese sea or the rift valley, any one of the two solid and ancient blocks of Angaraland or peninsular India shifted towards the geo-cyncline which resulted in upheaval and formation of this greater plain of Northern India.

The relief of this greater plain of which the study area is a part, is featureless plane and monotony of which is broken by the river bluffs, leaves, sand-dunes and some low lying areas in the ravines of river Chambal and Yamuna in the Southern part of Agra district as well as some residuals of Arawali hills. Topographically, Agra district has been divided in older alluvium or bangar land, trans-Yamuna zone, newer alluvium or khadar land, the ravine lands and Chambal Utangan plain.

The cultural aspects include the interaction and inter- relationships between nature and man. In the way, opportunities of nature as utilized by man to fulfill his day to day needs determine the cultural environment of any region. Perhaps, it is simplest to say that specific culture is the total way of life of a people. To deal with the cultural identify of Agra district, it is to be noted that the district beginning from the Moughal period during the reign of Akbar, it was developing as big industrial center to produce better quality product of silk embroidered by gold and silver threads, carpet making, sugar industry, armours and daggers of Agra and Fatehpur Sikri exported to different parts of the county and upto the present period of industrial development largely producing, engineering goods, electric goods, poultry products, iron and caste iron products, tannery of skins, leather works, manufacturing of rolling mills and agricultural implements, metal based goods, brass, copper and aluminum wares etc. Besides Nunhai, Foundry Nagar, Sikandra, a number of industrial units have developed in outs skirts of Agra city and its towns like Fatehpur Sikri, Fatehabad, Bah, Jagner etc.

An analysis of population of Agra district includes its decadal growth which is above 20 percent after 1961 upto 2001 both in rural and urban areas and the district has now been populated by a number of 3620436 as per 2001 census in which Etmadpur tahsil has the lowest number of 315273 persons while Agra tahsil has recorded highest number of 1753818 persons. The sex ratio in Agra district in 2001 has been calculated to be 852 which is lowest in Fatehabad to be 831 and highest in Kirawali to be 856 females per thousand of males in 2001. The literacy in Agra district has been recorded to be 64.97 percent. The participation rate of the district ranges is between 24.70 percent to 29.20 percent in rural and urban areas respectively.

Agra district represents settlement patterns of plain as well as varying topography of ravines from large to small settlements of the Southern blocks of Fatehabad, Bah to Jaitpur Kalan which have recorded an average number below 2250 persons per settlements while the blocks surroundings Agra city like Bichpuri, Khandauli, Akola, Etmadpur etc. have revealed large sized settlements having more than 2750 persons per settlements.

Cultivable wastes including the land of low fertility and capable of growing grass and trees and are easily reclaimable covered 6410 hectares of land in 1989-90 which reduced to 1968 hectares of land 2003-04 which is the result of successful implementation of land reclamation programs in the district which is less than 1.0 percent. The another important use of land is the area under forest lands whether grown naturally or planted by individuals or any other type of agency.

Current and old fallows representing land of low fertility and left uncultivated for one or two years to maintain the fertility by natural process have reduced to only 5.32 percent in 2003-04 from 7.09 of total area of the district.

In the context of present study, land use intensity which is a very fair indicatory of the optimum utilization of land has been worked out by involving rank and composite weightage of 3 factors like (i) Percentage of cultivated area, (ii) Percentage of double cropped area, (iii) Percentage of irrigated area at block levels and after the classification of composite weightage from low to high categories the spatial patterns of land use intensity have been traced out in Agra district.

The geographers dealing with the spatial patterns of cropping with their responsible geographical factors may be noted here as Ryan (1943), Weaver (1954), Buchanan (1959), Clark (1962), Eddowes (1969), Chakravarti (1970), Sharma (1972), Gill (1976), Sandhu (1977), Mishra, Pratibha (1983) Barah Vimal (1999).

The study of various aspects of cropping at the level of their specialization with the mode of agriculture practices, system and technology has become very significant. In this direction, the micro-level study of agricultural diversification concentration and combination of various crops with their suitability, productivity and profitability to assess the limits of their potentials development and to trace the spatial impediments whether social or physical is quite necessary for their planned development.