Karnataka Has 41 Percent of India's Software and Services Exports and a Per Capita Income 97 Percent Above the National Figure, in a State Joined Together in 1956 From Five Territories

Karnataka had 41 percent of India’s software and services exports in 2024-25, according to the state’s Economic Survey for 2025-26, which cites figures from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics. The same Survey estimates the state’s per capita income for 2025-26 at Rs 4,33,326 and puts that 97 percent above the all-India figure of Rs 2,19,575. These are the state government’s own estimates. The state behind them took its present shape on 1 November 1956, and the census figures below are from 2011, the latest published, because the 2027 census is under way.

Five territories became Mysore State on 1 November 1956

Section 7 of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 formed a new State of Mysore from the “appointed day”, which section 2 fixes as 1 November 1956. It joined the old Mysore state to Kannada-speaking districts that had been run from elsewhere. From Bombay came Belgaum (except Chandgad taluka), Bijapur, Dharwar and Kanara. From Hyderabad came Gulbarga, Raichur and Bidar, each minus a few taluks. From Madras came South Kanara (except Kasaragod taluka and the Amindivi Islands) and Kollegal taluka, and the State of Coorg became a district. The Legislature’s handbook adds that parts of Bellary district had already joined Mysore after Andhra State was formed in 1953. The Hyderabad districts had belonged to the Nizam’s state until 1948, a story told in our account of Operation Polo.

The old Mysore state settled its constitutional position early. The handbook records that the Maharaja set up a Constituent Assembly for Mysore by a proclamation of 29 October 1947, that the members resolved to apply the Constitution framed in Delhi, and that the Maharaja followed with a proclamation on 25 November 1949. The new Assembly first sat on 19 December 1956 in the newly built Vidhana Soudha. Under section 36 of the Act the Legislative Council held all the sitting members of Mysore’s existing Council plus 12 members for the added territories, and the handbook dates the Council’s origin to a body set up in 1907.

The state kept the name Mysore for 17 years. The Mysore State (Alteration of Name) Act, 1973 (Act 31 of 1973) renamed it Karnataka from 1 November 1973, as the footnotes to the Law Ministry’s edition of the Constitution record.

Two houses, 28 Lok Sabha seats and 31 districts

Karnataka is one of six states with a second chamber, a subject covered in our guide to which states have two houses. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 gives its Assembly 224 constituencies, 36 reserved for Scheduled Castes and 15 for Scheduled Tribes. The Council has 75 members: 25 elected by MLAs, 25 by local authorities, 7 by graduates, 7 by teachers and 11 nominated by the Governor. In Parliament the state has 28 Lok Sabha seats, five reserved for Scheduled Castes and two for Scheduled Tribes, and 12 seats in the Rajya Sabha under the Constitution’s Fourth Schedule. Article 170 ties Assembly seat totals to the 2001 census until figures from the first census after 2026 are published.

Below the state, the Survey counts 31 districts and a three-tier rural system of 31 zilla panchayats, 239 taluk panchayats and 5,946 gram panchayats. In Bengaluru, a PTI report in The Week says the state notified five city corporations on 2 September 2025 under the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024, to replace the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. The Greater Bengaluru Authority is chaired ex officio by the Chief Minister.

The High Court of Karnataka has its principal seat in Bengaluru and benches at Dharwad and Kalaburagi. LiveLaw records that the two benches were inaugurated on 4 and 5 July 2008 as circuit benches and became permanent on 25 and 31 August 2013. Kannada is the official language under section 2 of the Karnataka Official Language Act, 1963, which received the Governor’s assent on 5 October 1963.

At the 2011 census Karnataka had 6,10,95,297 people on 1,91,791 square kilometres. That was 5.05 percent of India’s population and ninth among states and union territories, and 61.33 percent lived in rural areas. Literacy was 75.36 percent, against 74.04 percent for India.

An economy of Rs 29 lakh crore that runs on services

The Survey puts Karnataka’s gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of goods and services produced in the state in a year) at Rs 29.06 lakh crore in 2024-25, and estimates Rs 32.81 lakh crore for 2025-26. A lakh crore is a trillion rupees. That is 12.9 percent more at current prices and 8.1 percent more after adjusting for prices, against 7.4 percent for India. The Survey puts the state’s share of India’s GDP at 9.19 percent in 2025-26, up from 8.79 percent, and per capita income rose from Rs 3,86,156 in 2024-25 to Rs 4,33,326. Services supply 69.8 percent of gross state value added, industry 19.4 percent and agriculture 10.8 percent.

On exports, the Survey says Karnataka’s came to about Rs 16,02,865 crore in 2024-25, 22.96 percent of the country’s. Its share was 41 percent for software and services and 6.96 percent for goods, and it ranks first in services and fourth in goods. The state also recorded USD 7.8 billion of electronics exports, second to Tamil Nadu and 22 percent of the national total.

Bengaluru Urban district produced Rs 11,73,574 crore in 2024-25, or 40.4 percent of the state’s GDP, and had a per capita income of Rs 8,55,960. The state’s targets build on that base. Its Global Capability Centres policy for 2024 to 2029, which the Survey calls India’s first, aims at 500 new centres (the in-house technology units that multinationals run in India), 3.5 lakh jobs and USD 50 billion for the economy. Its Startup Policy for 2025 to 2030 aims at 25,000 new start-ups, 10,000 of them outside Bengaluru.

Where Karnataka leads, according to its sources

The Coffee Board’s final estimate for 2025-26 lists Karnataka at 2,56,695 tonnes of India’s 3,73,000, about 69 percent by tuput’s arithmetic. The Survey ranks the state first for elephants, at 6,395 in the 2023 estimate, and second for tigers, at 563 in the 2022 estimate, and says nearly 60 percent of the Western Ghats lies within it.

UNESCO lists three World Heritage sites wholly in the state: Hampi, inscribed in 1986 and covered in our Hampi guide, Pattadakal in 1987, and the Hoysala temples at Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapura in 2023.

Two Karnatakas in one budget, and Article 371J

The Survey’s district tables show the gap inside the state. In 2024-25 the Kalaburagi division, made up of Ballari, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Koppal, Raichur, Vijayanagara and Yadgir, had the lowest per capita income of any division at Rs 1,89,938, against a state average of Rs 3,86,156 and Bengaluru Urban’s Rs 8,55,960. The Survey attributes this to the limited presence of industry and services there.

Article 371J, inserted by the Constitution (Ninety-eighth) Amendment Act, 2012 and in force from 1 October 2013, answers that gap in the text. The President may, by order, give the Governor a special responsibility for a separate development board for the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, a fair allocation of funds, and equal opportunities in public jobs, education and vocational training. The order may reserve seats and posts for people from the region by birth or domicile. The Leaflet reports that the 2013 orders reserve 70 percent of seats in the region’s institutions and 8 percent in state-wide ones, with 75 to 85 percent of posts in the region’s local cadres, depending on grade, and 8 percent of state-level posts. Our guide to Articles 371 to 371J places Karnataka’s among the eleven.

The Survey says Rs 24,778.33 crore was allocated for the region from 2013-14 to January 2026, Rs 15,803.92 crore was spent, and 35,013 of 43,397 approved works were finished. It adds that the state gives a further Rs 3,000 crore a year to seven backward districts and asks the Union government to match it.

Where the budget is argued over

Two disputes run through Karnataka’s finances. The first is the five welfare guarantees launched in 2023-24: Shakti, Anna Bhagya, Gruha Jyothi, Gruha Lakshmi and Yuva Nidhi. Gruha Lakshmi pays Rs 2,000 a month to the woman who heads a household. The Survey says 1,28,88,617 women had enrolled by November 2025 and Rs 28,608 crore is set aside for it in 2025-26. PRS puts all five at Rs 51,034 crore in 2025-26 and Rs 51,286 crore in 2026-27, or 12 percent of spending excluding debt repayment. The Survey says they strengthen inclusive growth and social security.

The Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report No. 4 of 2025, as PRS summarises it, found that the schemes raised revenue expenditure and the revenue deficit, and that in 2023-24 they cut infrastructure spending by Rs 5,229 crore from the year before, partly by borrowing. It put the fiscal deficit at 2.14 percent of GSDP in 2022-23 and 2.97 percent in 2024-25. The Survey notes that the Karnataka Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2002, which it says made the state the first to enact such a law, caps the deficit at 3 percent. PRS lists the 2026-27 budget’s fiscal deficit at 2.9 percent of GSDP and its liabilities at about 25 percent.

The second is the Union’s tax money. PRS gives Karnataka’s share of central taxes as 4.713 percent under the 14th Finance Commission (2015 to 2020), 3.647 percent under the 15th (2021 to 2026) and 4.13 percent under the 16th, tabled in Parliament on 1 February 2026, for 2026 to 2031. The 15th Commission’s formula gave 45 percent weight to income distance, which PRS defines as the distance of a state’s income from the highest state’s, with a lower income earning a higher share. The Survey argues the state lost share because of its high per capita income, earned mostly in Bengaluru and the southern districts, and asks for matching Union funds for the backward region. The Finance Commission guide explains the formula.

What comes next

The first phase of Census 2027, the houselisting, runs from 1 April to 30 September 2026, in a 30-day window each state sets, and the population count has a reference date of 1 March 2027, according to the Press Information Bureau. Under Article 170, Karnataka’s 224 Assembly seats stay as they are until the figures of the first census after 2026 are published.

In Bengaluru the Survey lists the Suburban Rail Project, at a revised cost of Rs 23,103 crore, covering 148.17 km on four corridors in a six-year schedule for 8.9 lakh daily commuters, and Metro Phase 2 of 75.06 km, of which 53.80 km is operational. On 29 September 2026 the High Court set up a three-judge committee to study circuit or permanent benches in eight regions, among them Mangaluru, Udupi and Hassan.