Punjab does not look poor. Perhaps that is precisely why its economic predicament is so easy to misunderstand.Drive through its towns and villages and there is plenty to suggest prosperity. Houses are larger, cars are better, farm machinery is sophisticated and weddings increasingly elaborate. Almost every family seems to have someone abroad. There is money in Punjab.Yet a more important question is: how much new wealth is Punjab itself creating?Punjab is not a poor state by conventional measures. Its per capita income remains above the national average. In 2023-24, Punjab’s economy was estimated to have grown by 6.8 per cent in real terms, against 7.6 per cent for India. Its estimated per capita income was Rs 1.96 lakh, compared with Rs 1.83 lakh nationally.These figures describe a state whose old sources of economic strength may no longer be enough to guarantee its future.Debt, agriculture, migration, groundwater depletion and industrial decline are usually discussed as separate problems. But they may also reflect something deeper: an economy increasingly dependent on accumulated wealth, money earned elsewhere and public spending, while creating too little new productive wealth of its own.

Land can make a family look wealthy without generating adequate income for the next generation. A house may appreciate enormously without producing anything. Remittances from abroad can transform a household without creating an enterprise in Punjab. The problem begins when consumption and asset appreciation start substituting for production.The state’s finances offer a similar warning. Punjab’s outstanding debt was estimated at Rs 3.74 lakh crore in 2024-25, around 46.6 per cent of GSDP, while the budget projected a revenue deficit of Rs 23,198 crore.Debt itself is not necessarily a failure. Governments borrow to create assets and support future growth. The real question is whether enough borrowing is expanding the economy that will eventually repay it.Punjab once had a different relationship with work. The farmer knew his fields, the trader built his business, the mechanic knew his machines and the manufacturer worried about production, quality and markets. Work was not merely a source of income; it carried ownership.That old idea of kirat has weakened—not because Punjabis have forgotten how to work, but because we have become increasingly detached from the process through which value is created.

The government will provide the job. The subsidy will protect income. Migrant labour will work the fields. Overseas education will provide the career. Someone else will take the entrepreneurial risk.Yet the Punjabi who goes abroad often does precisely what Punjab needs more of: works long hours, adapts to unfamiliar systems, takes risks, starts businesses and employs people.That is Punjab’s great contradiction. The problem is not lack of ambition, but where that ambition finds its best economic return.Punjab’s industrial history illustrates the challenge. Towns such as Rajpura once had a stronger manufacturing presence, supporting factories as well as transporters, suppliers, mechanics, traders and small businesses.Their decline cannot be attributed to one government or cause. Industrial relations, geography, freight costs, infrastructure, changing markets and competition from states with larger industrial ecosystems all played a role.What matters now is understanding what disappears when factories close. An industrial ecosystem takes decades to build but can vanish surprisingly quickly.Punjab remains an important industrial state. The concern is whether enough new investment is arriving to create the next generation of productive capacity.

Agriculture presents an even harder dilemma. The Green Revolution was one of Punjab’s greatest contributions to India. But incentives that worked brilliantly in one era can become difficult to sustain in another.Landholdings have shrunk, costs have risen and the ecological price has become impossible to ignore. The latest Central Ground Water Board assessment puts 115 of Punjab’s 153 groundwater assessment units in the over-exploited category, with extraction estimated at 156.87 per cent of annual extractable resources.This is no longer merely an agricultural problem. It is an economic one.Then there is migration. Punjab’s diaspora is one of its greatest achievements and an extraordinary reservoir of capital, knowledge and networks. The question is not why young Punjabis leave, but why so many regard leaving as the most sensible economic decision available.Families sell land, borrow and spend years of savings on overseas education. The young person may prosper, but Punjab loses talent, enterprise and ambition.Migration will and should continue. The goal should be to make leaving a choice rather than an economic necessity.As Punjab approaches another election, political parties will naturally talk about welfare, relief and what government can provide. But voters can also ask: What will create productive employment? Which industries should Punjab attract and retain? Why should entrepreneurs choose Punjab? What should universities produce besides degrees? How does a small business become a large one?

Above all: What will Punjab produce that someone outside Punjab will pay for?Government has a major role through infrastructure, reliable power, education, sensible regulation and functioning institutions. But government cannot create an economy by itself.Businesses must take risks. Universities must connect education with work. Families must distinguish between spending wealth and creating it. The diaspora’s relationship with Punjab can evolve from sending money home to investing capital, knowledge and experience here.Punjab need not become what it was forty years ago. That Punjab is gone.What is worth recovering is the confidence that work should leave something behind—a better farm, a business employing ten people, a product sold beyond Punjab, a research idea turned into a company, or a professional building an institution rather than merely seeking a position.For years, Punjab’s conversation has focused on what it has lost. Perhaps the more important question is what it is creating.An election can change a government. It cannot answer that question.The Punjab of our memories was not prosperous because somebody promised it prosperity. People built it.The more pertinent question for all of us to ponder is: Who is building Punjab’s next rupee? 

( DAILY WORLD )