ACADEMIA Letters One District One Product Scheme: Tale of An Aspirational District in the Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India Nagendra Kumar Maurya, Dept of Applied Economics, University of Lucknow Roli Misra, Dept of Economics, University of Lucknow I Introduction: Uttar Pradesh (UP), the most populous state of the India, dominated by agrarian activities, continues to be backward in the national context and amongst the inter-state comparisons. The Eastern UP comprising of the 28 districts is ofcially designated as the most backward region of the state and each district faces situational factors of development which are unique to it. In January 2018, the Government of India launched a scheme named ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ programme. ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ Programme aims to expeditiously improve the socio-economic status of 115 districts across 28 states (Lipi 2018). If we look at the report, then, the four districts of the Eastern UP namely Balrampur, Bahraich, Siddharthnagar, Shravasti featured in the bottom ten ranking on this complete list which is a cause of serious concern. However, the new nomenclature from backward to aspira- tional districts itself gives more hope and scope for transforming the dynamics and defnition of development. Furthermore, in the same year the UP Government launched an innovative scheme named One District-One Product (ODOP) to encourage indigenous and specialized products and crafts of the state and enable the people to gain expertise in one product, value addition of the product and improvement in the growth of the state’s GSDP. In this backdrop, we attempt to analyse the impact of the ODOP scheme in generating employment and enhancing incomes of the benefciaries in one of the aspirational districts namely Balrampur whose product under ODOP scheme is Masoor Pulse (Red lentils). Academia Letters, August 2021 Corresponding Author: Nagendra Kumar Maurya, nagendrainsearch@gmail.com Citation: Maurya, N.K., Misra, R. (2021). One District One Product Scheme: Tale of An Aspirational District in the Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. Academia Letters, Article 3164. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3164. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0