Punjab
Partition amputee became India's breadbasket through Green Revolution, now seeking post-agricultural identity
Punjab feeds India while depleting itself. This northwestern state, comprising just 1.5 percent of India's landmass, contributes nearly 50 percent of government wheat procurement and 25 percent of rice, making it the indispensable granary of a nation of 1.4 billion people.
The land of five rivers bore the Sikh Empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh until British annexation in 1849. The 1947 Partition inflicted wounds that never fully healed. Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew borders in six weeks that bisected Punjab along religious lines. The Sikhs lost Lahore, their imperial capital, to Pakistan. Twelve million people crossed the new frontier in both directions. Virtually no Muslim survived in East Punjab; virtually no Hindu or Sikh remained in West Punjab. Estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to two million.
The Green Revolution transformed Punjab beginning in 1966, when Mexican wheat seeds arrived promising abundance. Rice production exploded from 0.5 million metric tons in 1970 to 12 million by 2017. By 1970, Punjab produced 70 percent of India's food grains. But abundance carried hidden costs. The number of tube wells multiplied from 200,000 in 1970 to over 1.5 million today. Groundwater levels now drop nearly 20 inches annually.
The 1980s brought political conflagration. Operation Blue Star in June 1984 sent Indian army tanks into the Golden Temple complex, Sikhism's holiest site, to dislodge militants demanding an independent Khalistan. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards four months later triggered anti-Sikh pogroms that killed over 2,700 people in Delhi alone. A decade of insurgency and counterinsurgency followed, leaving scars that still shape Punjab's relationship with New Delhi.
Today Punjab faces overlapping crises. Groundwater extraction runs at 149 percent of recharge rates. State-mandated delays in rice planting to conserve water compress the harvest window, forcing farmers to burn stubble rather than wait for decomposition. The smoke chokes Delhi every November. Meanwhile, Canada rejected 74 percent of Indian student visas in August 2025, slamming shut the emigration pathway that absorbed rural frustration.
By 2026, Punjab confronts an agricultural model that succeeded too well. The wheat-rice monoculture that rescued India from famine now poisons the aquifers and soil that sustain it.