Extending southward is the Deccan plateau, terminating in the Nilgiri Hills where tea and coffee are grown. The southern coasts, Malabar and Coromandel, are famous for their paddy fields and citrus fruit. India's economy is largely agrarian, and India has become self-sufficient in food, although agricultural yields are comparatively low and malnutrition is a perennial problem. Manufacturing industry has been developed since independence in 1947, with considerable state investment and control. The state also controls most mining, of which coal and iron ore are the most important products.
Electricity is produced by thermal, hydroelectric, and a minority of nuclear power plants.
The principal exports are gems, engineering products, garments, and leather goods. The main crops are rice, sugar-cane, tea, cotton, and jute, and the chief industrial products are steel, transport equipment and machinery, textiles, and cement. Inhabited from an unknown date by Dravidian peoples, the Indus civilization sites, dating from c .2500 BC, indicate one of the world's earliest urban cultures. It was destroyed c .1500 BC, possibly by the Aryan invasions. The next 1,000 years saw the evolution of the religious and social systems which remain characteristic of the Hindus.