Groundwater Exploitation in Punjab: Socio-Economic Impacts and Policy Disconnect

Gist Punjab’s unsustainable groundwater extraction rate has created a deepening ecological crisis that disproportionately harms small and marginal farmers. As water tables plummet, only wealthier landowners can afford the deeper tube wells required, forcing smaller farmers to buy water and transferring their wealth to larger cultivators. This dynamic shifts the focus of the agrarian crisis from mere ecological depletion to widening economic disparity, demanding a recalibration of state subsidies to target cultivators rather than pump owners. Background The Green Revolution established a highly concentrated rice-wheat cropping system in Punjab, underpinned by assured procurement mechanisms, heavily subsidised electricity, and virtually unrestricted access to groundwater. Farmers remain reluctant to diversify away from water-intensive paddy due to structural uncertainties in storage infrastructure, market prices, processing, and supply chain logistics for alternative crops. In this high-input agricultural model, unregulated groundwater extraction became the primary tool to de-risk farming, leading to a steady, systemic decline in the state's aquifers over the past few decades. Key Pointers Inequality through resource access: Groundwater depletion raises the capital cost of irrigation, systematically privileging financially secure farmers who can…