Punjab once fed a hungry nation. Guided by government policy and buoyed by subsidised power, farmers embraced paddy and wheat, chemical fertilisers, and the tube well. The Green Revolution delivered food security to India—but at a staggering ecological cost that Punjab is now paying alone. Today, 73 percent of its groundwater blocks are ‘over-exploited’.
Extraction stands at an alarming 156 percent. Nearly 97 percent of this is pulled out for irrigation—mostly for a single crop that was never native to Punjab: paddy. The science is undisputed. Punjab’s groundwater in the first 100 metres might dry up by 2029. By 2039, availability could plunge below 300 metres, where extraction becomes unaffordable and the water becomes unfit for irrigation.
Meanwhile, paddy still claims nearly 90 percent of Punjab’s kharif acreage. Making this water crisis national is the situation turning critical in Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Puducherry, too.
There is no time for blame; just time for a solution. The Punjab case should show the way. Farmers grew what the nation asked them to grow. Assured procurement made paddy the safest economic choice. Power subsidies kept production costs low. To suddenly demand that farmers use less groundwater, without giving them viable alternatives, is unrealistic and unfair. Solutions do exist, and they must now become non-negotiable. For decades, experts—from the Johl Committee in 1986 to agricultural scientists today—have recommended reducing paddy acreage and creating stable markets for alternative crops. Farmers say they are willing to shift if the government guarantees procurement and fair prices.
Energy reform must be part of the answer. Smarter electricity pricing—paired with direct financial incentives—can curb over-pumping while protecting farmer incomes. Early results from Punjab’s ‘Paani bachao, paisa kamao’ pilot scheme show that such incentives work. They must be scaled up. Infrastructure, too, needs an urgent overhaul. With under a third of farmland receiving canal water, Punjab must remodel its British-era canal network to reduce dependence on groundwater. And in the face of worsening floods, many of the state’s 1.4 million abandoned borewells offer the rare opportunity of conversion to low-cost recharge structures to replenish depleted aquifers.
Punjab now needs coordinated Centre-state action that places farmers at the core, and this cooperation must deliver results—not repeat decades of drift, since even the Akali Dal-BJP partnership in the Vajpayee era showed that political alignment alone cannot move long-pending groundwater reforms.