Mansa is in the cotton belt of the southern Malwa, dry country on the Ghaggar's old flood plain, made a district in 1992 out of Bathinda. Its water table is deep, its canal water arrives at the tail of the system, and it has among the lowest per capita incomes in Punjab.
The muzara movement of the 1940s was strongest here. Kishangarh, shelled by Patiala state forces in March 1949, is a Mansa village. Bhaini Bagha, Dhalewan and Bhikhi were all in it.
Mansa villages carry a large share of Punjab's landless Dalit population, and the district has been the centre of the movement to enforce the law reserving a third of village common land for Dalit cultivators. Village after village has gone to auction and been contested.
The district produces a great deal of the state's popular music and much of its kabaddi. Moosa, near the town, is where Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, who recorded as Sidhu Moose Wala, was from. He was shot dead at Jawaharke on 29 May 2022 at twenty-eight.
Bathinda's thermal plants and the pesticide use of the surrounding cotton belt are the background to the health reporting that produced the phrase cancer train.
The district's cotton failed repeatedly and paddy took the land, in the driest country in Punjab with the deepest tubewells and the highest debt.
It has the highest landless share of any district and the muzara movement's villages are in it, which means it has both the sharpest land conflict and the least land to fight over.
It also produces a disproportionate share of the state's musicians and kabaddi players. A district with no other route out produces performers, which is a pattern seen everywhere.