Since India began liberalising its economy, Bareilly has experienced rapid growth. Commerce has diversified with mall culture, although the area's rural economy remains agrarian, handicraft (zari-zardosi embroidery work on cloth material), bamboo and cane furniture. The city is equidistant from New Delhi (national capital) and Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. This makes Bareilly a nodal point between two major cities of India. Bareilly was a flourishing cotton centre in early nineteenth century. There were about 20,000 looms in the city in 1802, with a production value of Rs 30,00,000 per year. Robert Glyn, the then Magistrate of Bareilly asked Ghulam Yahya to write an account of "craftsmen, the names of tools of manufacture and production and their dress and manners". The most popular trades in and around Bareilly during the 1820s were manufacturing glass, jewellery, glass and lac bangles and gold and silver thread, crimping, bean drying, wire drawing, charpoy weaving, keeping a grocer's shop and selling kebabs.