Ramanagara district
Encyclopedia
Ramanagara district is one of the 30 districts
Districts of Karnataka
The Indian State of Karnataka is located within 11°30' North and 18°30' North latitudes and 74° East and 78°30' East longitude. It is situated on a tableland where the Western and Eastern Ghat ranges converge into the Nilgiri hill complex, in the western part of the Deccan Peninsular region of India...

 of Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...

 state in southern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Ramanagara city is the administrative headquarters of this district. The district is part of Bangalore Division
Bangalore Division
Bangalore division is one of the four divisions of Karnataka state of India. The division comprises the districts of Bangalore, Bangalore Rural, Chitradurga, Davanagere, Kolar, Shimoga, and Tumkur.-See also:*Districts of Karnataka...

.

History

Ramanagara district was carved out of the erstwhile Bangalore Rural district
Bangalore Rural district
Bangalore Rural District is one of the 30 districts in Karnataka. It was formed in 1986, when Bangalore district was divided into Bangalore Rural and Bangalore . Presently in Bangalore Rural district, there are 2 divisions, 4 Talukas, 35 Hoblis , 1,713 inhabited and 177 uninhabited villages, 9...

 on 23 August 2007, comprising the erstwhile Channapatna
Channapatna
Channapatna is a small city located 60 km south-west of Bangalore, India on Bangalore-Mysore state highway.The city is famous for its wooden toys and lacquerware. In the native language , Channapatna is also called as "goMbegaLa ooru" meaning toys town in English. These toys are manufactured...

, Kanakapura
Kanakapura
Kanakapura is a town and the headquarters of Kanakapura Taluk in the Ramanagara district in the state of Karnataka, India. Situated near the city of Bengaluru, this town is famous for the production of silk and granite.- Etymology :...

, Ramanagara and Magadi
Magadi
Magadi is a town in Ramanagaram district in the Indian state of Karnataka.Magadi was capital of Kempe Gowda who built Bangalore. It is alsothe setting of the true story "Old Munnusamy and the man-eater of Magadi" by Kenneth Anderson ....

 taluks of the undivided district.

Geography

Ramanagara is approximately 50 km southwest of Bangalore
Bangalore
Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...

. It has an average elevation of 747 metres (2450 feet).
Ramanagara is famous for the huge rocky outcroppings. Those that are popular for rock climbing are; Savandurga
Savandurga
Savandurga is a hill 33 km west of Bangalore off the Magadi road , in India. The hill is famous for a temple and is also awarded to be first among the largest monolith hills in the world. The hill rises to 1226 m above mean sea level and forms a part of the Deccan plateau. It consists of...

, Ramadevarabetta, SRS betta and Thenginkalbetta.

Demographics

According to the 2011 census
2011 census of India
The 15th Indian National census was conducted in two phases, houselisting and population enumeration. Houselisting phase began on April 1, 2010 and involved collection of information about all buildings...

 Ramanagara district has a population
Demographics of India
The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people , more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing...

 of 1,082,739, roughly equal to the nation of Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

 or the US state of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

. This gives it a ranking of 421st in India (out of a total of 640
Districts of India
A district is an administrative division of an Indian state or territory. Districts are further subdivided, in some cases into Sub-Divisions, and otherwise directly into tehsils or talukas.District officials include:...

). The district has a population density of 303 PD/sqkm . Its population growth rate
Family planning in India
Family planning in India is based on efforts largely sponsored by the Indian government. In the 1965-2009 period, contraceptive usage has more than tripled and the fertility rate has more than halved , but the national fertility rate is still high enough to cause long-term population growth...

 over the decade 2001-2011 was 5.06 %. Ramanagara has a sex ratio
Sex ratio
Sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. The primary sex ratio is the ratio at the time of conception, secondary sex ratio is the ratio at time of birth, and tertiary sex ratio is the ratio of mature organisms....

 of 976 females
Women in India
The status of women in India has been subject to many great changes over the past few millennia. From equal status with men in ancient times through the low points of the medieval period, to the promotion of equal rights by many reformers, the history of women in India has been eventful...

 for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate
Literacy in India
Literacy in India is key for socio-economic progress, and the Indian literacy rate grew to 74.04% in 2011 from 12% at the end of British rule in 1947. Although this was a greater than sixfold improvement, the level is well below the world average literacy rate of 84%, and India currently has the...

 of 69.2 %.

Economy

Ramanagara is famous for its silk market, one of the biggest in India, giving it the other name of Silktown. Ramanagara district includes the Bidadi industrial area, which houses the manufacturing units of Toyota and Coca-Cola, and a 1400 MW combined cycle gas-based power plant.

Hills and landscape

The region has several tall granitic hills which are famous for many short rock climbs
Rock climbing
Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...

, typically 1 to 2 pitches in length. Grades vary from 5.8 American to 5.11 American. It is home to some of the world's oldest granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 outcrops. Some of the interesting climbs are on the Wanakkal wall ("Gabbar ki asli pasand", "Labor pain"), on the Rainbow wall ("UIAA", "Kalia"), on Anna-Thamma ("Darkness at dawn", "Black Diamond", the name Anna-Thama means 'elder-brother-younger-brother' in Kannada).

Another well known hill is Ramadevarabetta. Along with Savandurga
Savandurga
Savandurga is a hill 33 km west of Bangalore off the Magadi road , in India. The hill is famous for a temple and is also awarded to be first among the largest monolith hills in the world. The hill rises to 1226 m above mean sea level and forms a part of the Deccan plateau. It consists of...

 this was one of the shooting locations for David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...

's A Passage to India
A Passage to India (film)
A Passage to India is a 1984 drama film written and directed by David Lean. The screenplay is based on the 1924 novel of the same title by E. M. Forster and the 1960 play by Santha Rama Rau that was inspired by the novel....

. Small door like grottoes were made in the rock to resemble caves. It was also in this region that the path-breaking Hindi movie, Sholay
Sholay
Sholay is a 1975 Indian action-adventure film produced by G.P. Sippy and directed by his son Ramesh Sippy. It is considered among the greatest films in the history of Indian cinema. Released on 15 August 1975, it stars Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bhaduri and...

, was shot.

Other famous hills in the region include the Revanasideshwara hill and Handigundi.

These hills have been threatened by quarrying and also plans to carve these hills into statues. The region is covered in scrub forest and is home to threatened bird species such as the Yellow-throated Bulbul
Yellow-throated Bulbul
The Yellow-throated Bulbul is a species of bulbul endemic to southern peninsular India. They are found on scrub habitats on steep, rocky hills many of which are threatened by granite quarrying. It is confusable only with the White-browed Bulbul with which its range overlaps but is distinctively...

 and Long-billed Vulture
Long-billed Vulture
The Indian Vulture is an Old World vulture and is closely related to the Griffon Vulture, G. fulvus. It breeds mainly on hilly crags in central and peninsular India. The birds in the northern part of its range once considered a subspecies are now considered a separate species, the Slender-billed...

s. The hill is today one of the few locations in south India where Long-billed Vulture
Long-billed Vulture
The Indian Vulture is an Old World vulture and is closely related to the Griffon Vulture, G. fulvus. It breeds mainly on hilly crags in central and peninsular India. The birds in the northern part of its range once considered a subspecies are now considered a separate species, the Slender-billed...

s nest. The region is also home to numerous sloth bear
Sloth Bear
The sloth bear , also known as the labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous species of bear found wild within the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the Pleistocene and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution...

s.

Closepet granites

The Closepet granites are a major geological feature of this region and are from the Lower Proterozoic era. This belt of rocks extend in the north-south direction in 50 km belt. This belt has younger potassic granites and is believed to separate two distinct crustal blocks of Archaean age. The block to the west has low grade granite-greenstone belts with iron-manganese ores and to the east are younger gneisses of granitic and granodioritic composition with gold-bearing schist belts.

External links

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