Indian Punjab has unintentionally conducted two experiments. One demonstrates that a neglected canal system can be restored to life. The other demonstrates the long-term consequences of allowing water to become effectively free. Pakistani Punjab should learn from both, but imitate only one.

Until March 2022, Indian Punjab was using little more than a quarter of the canal system it already owned. Against a designed potential of roughly 7.59 million acres, only 2.09 million acres were actually receiving canal water. The rest had quietly slipped onto tubewells while the canals meant to serve it silted up, breached, or simply fell out of use. If the Punjab government's reported figures are accepted, canal irrigation coverage has since risen to around 78 percent. Groundwater extraction has fallen from 164 percent of the annual extractable resource in 2023 to 156 percent in 2025, and over-exploited assessment units have declined from 117 to 111. This is not a state that has solved its water crisis: it is still extracting roughly one and a half times what is sustainable. But it has shown that restoring neglected canal infrastructure can slow the decline.

What is genuinely transferable is the method: restoration rather than construction. Since 2022, the Punjab government says it has invested about INR 67 billion (roughly PKR 196 billion) in canal modernisation, including nearly 13,000 kilometres of canals restored, over 15,500 canal reaches cleaned, nearly 18,350 watercourses revived, dormant lift schemes rehabilitated, and pipelines extended to fields that open channels no longer reached. It is framed not as routine maintenance but as groundwater policy,........

© The Friday Times