Poll-bound Punjab: A rich agrarian state hits a low for failing to adapt

Straddled with high debt, huge internal security outlay, excessive agrarian focus that choked industrialisation, Punjab is now also vulnerable to a host of problems brought on by poor social spending

Nothing else sums up the economic worries of Punjab and its people better: The Green Revolution made Punjab the richest major state in India, and it remained tethered at the top well into the eighties and nineties. In the new millennium, Punjab went down a slippery slope, and in four decades, its per capita income fell from fourth among 28 states and UTs in 1980-81, to 19th among 33 in 2019-20. 

How did this come about? Punjab is the complex story of a state that frittered the advantages of development, beset as it was by internal security risks and its