Understanding Punjab’s Groundwater Crisis
Punjab has been the agricultural heart of India for a long time. While holding only 2% of the population and 2% of the land, Punjab is responsible for over 40% of India’s agricultural supply. With 85% of Punjab’s population working as farmers, the groundwater crisis in Punjab poses a massive risk to one of the biggest farming states in the world. In order to understand this crisis, as well as the general state of Punjab today, we have to take a look at its history and how a once bountiful empire turned into a region crippled by systemic oppression.
It all started in 1849, when the East India Company under the British empire conquered Punjab after conquering the rest of India in the years prior. They waited for the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the king of one of the most bountiful empires in history (the Sikh Empire). This empire was not only one of the most economically prosperous empires in history, but also had some of the highest happiness and approval ratings. Their resources were plentiful and there was no sign of slowing down. When the British took over, it was a completely different story. They started taxes and policies to drive production of certain crops in Punjab and make a nice profit. They altered the education systems which lowered the literacy rates and removed funding from many of the existing schools. They started marginalizing religious minorities (specifically Sikhs) in order to eliminate any possibilities of a resistance to the regime.
Alright, so obviously this wasn’t a great situation to be in, but what does that have to do with the groundwater crisis? Well, as a result of poor literacy rates and cultural assimilation, the majority of Punjab resorted to farming, particularly for the crops that were pushed by the British. This went on for years and years, and while Punjab continued to fall deeper and deeper into poverty, a revolutionary movement struck the British empire which caused the formation of both India and Pakistan in 1947, and it split Punjab in half.
This is a map of Punjab during the Sikh empire:
And this is a map of Punjab today:
Now, “Punjab” is roughly translated to the land of five rivers, but because of this massive shrinkage of land, it’s rivers were split up between Pakistan and India. As a result, although Punjab started becoming one of the world’s largest farming states, its water supply was cut in half.
To make matters even worse, states like Rajasthan and Haryana started facing their own water shortages, so the new central government decided to outsource a certain percentage of Punjab’s water supply to those states, which cut down Punjab’s water supply even more.
And if that wasn’t enough, the central government started an initiative called the green revolution in the 1960s to increase farming production in Punjab (again, specifically for rice and wheat, which caused all the other crops they were farming to decrease significantly) by using fertilizers and pesticides which are now banned in other countries for being too hazardous.
As a result of all this oppression, Punjab is now seeing two main problems in regards to water:
- In the past two decades, the groundwater table in Punjab has been falling at a rate of 25–30 centimetres a year. This is causing droughts in Punjab and a lack of groundwater.
- Punjab has the highest cancer rates in India with 90 cancer patients per 100,000 compared to the national average of 80 per 100,000. 18 people in Punjab succumb to cancer everyday.
You can check out my breakdown for these two problems in the second part of this article, Breaking Down Punjab’s Groundwater Crisis.
