Bhopal pairs lakeside beauty with heavy industry and ISRO labs
Capital of Madhya Pradesh and a Y-class Indian city, Bhopal runs a broad industrial base while hosting national research nodes including ISRO facilities. With Indore it forms a central Indian financial pairing, plus a Regional Science Centre under the national museum network.
Bhopal is the capital of Madhya Pradesh and headquarters of its district and division, nicknamed the City of Lakes for the natural and artificial lakes around it. The name may join Raja Bhoja with pal, a dam or reservoir; folklore credits the eleventh-century Paramara king Bhoja, whose minister built a dam, though other stories name a king called Bhupala. It sits about 500 metres up on the Malwa plateau, just north of the Vindhya range, and ranks among India's greenest cities.
The modern city was founded by Dost Mohammad Khan, a Pashtun soldier of the Mughal army who turned mercenary after Aurangzeb died and set up his state in 1707. The Marathas under Peshwa Bajirao I defeated the Mughal, Nizam and Nawab forces at the Battle of Bhopal in 1737, and a treaty with the East India Company in 1818 made it a princely state. From 1819 to 1926 four women, the Begums, ruled in succession, starting with Qudsia Begum; Bhopal was the second-largest Muslim-ruled princely state after Hyderabad.
In early December 1984 the Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked about 32 tons of toxic gas, mainly methyl isocyanate, in what is called the worst industrial disaster in history; a state report counted 3,787 deaths while other estimates run to 15,000, and the site's soil and groundwater remain contaminated. Today it hosts ISRO's Master Control Facility, BHEL and national institutes such as IISER, AIIMS and MANIT, and its economy was estimated at 44,175 crore rupees in 2020 to 2021. It was rated India's cleanest state capital in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Source: Bhopal
