Odisha extends from 17°49‟ to 22° 34‟ North Latitude and from 81° 27‟ to 87° 29‟ East Longitude. It is surrounded by West Bengal in the north-east, Bihar and Jharkhand in the north, Andhra Pradesh in the south-east, Chhattisgarh in the west and Bay of Bengal in the east. It has a coastline of about 480 km and its total area is 1,55,707 square km. covering about 4.87 % of the total area of the Country.
Administrative divisions:
Odisha is divided into 30 districts for administrative convenience. These are again regrouped into 3 revenue divisions (Central, Southern and Northern).
Odisha has 58 sub-divisions, 317 tahasils and 314 blocks. These 314 blocks comprise of 6,801 Gram Panchayats & 51,349 villages. There are 5 Municipal Corporations, 45 Municipalities, 60 Notified Area Councils and 2 Industrial towns. There are 583 numbers of Police Stations and 317 No. of Fire Stations. The State is divided into 21 no. of Lok Sabha Constituencies and 147 no. of Assembly Constituencies.
Economy
The economy has been witnessing structural transformation from an agriculture-based economy to services and industries driven economy. The share of the broad agriculture sector which was around 55 percent of GSDP in 1950-51 has come down to a level of 19.91 percent by 2016-17, while the combined share of Industries and Services sectors has rose from 45 percent to 80.09 percent during the same period.
(Source: Odisha Economic Survey-2016-17)
Odia is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Aryan language family. It descends from Odra Prakrit which itself evolved from Magadhi Prakrit. The latter was spoken in east India over 1,500 years ago, and is the primary language used in early Jain and Buddhist texts. Odia appears to have had relatively little influence from Persian and Arabic, compared to other major Indo-Aryan languages.