Punjab

Punjab lies in north-western India, bounded by Pakistan to the west and the Shivalik hills to the east. The capital is Chandigarh, shared with Haryana. The state was partitioned in 1947, when the eastern and western halves of the Punjab region were divided between India and Pakistan, and was reorganised again in 1966 into Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Punjab was the centre of the Green Revolution in India. High-yielding wheat and rice varieties, tubewell irrigation and assured public procurement turned it into the country’s largest contributor of wheat to the central pool, and the state’s yields per hectare are among the highest in India. The same system has produced a well-documented set of problems: a falling water table, soil degradation, and the burning of paddy residue in the autumn, which is a major contributor to winter air pollution across northern India including Delhi.

The state has a large diaspora in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, and remittances are significant. Its per-capita income is above the national average, but employment growth has lagged and emigration for study and work has been substantial. The Golden Temple at Amritsar is the holiest site of Sikhism, and the state’s politics has been shaped since the 1980s by the memory of the insurgency and its suppression.