Despair follows deluge

As floodwaters recede in Punjab, communities are left with ruined fields, lost livelihoods and an uncertain future. VIVEK MISHRA travels through the seven flood-hit districts to gauge the scale of the crisis.

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THE FLOODWATERS that swept across Punjab in late August, triggered by unusually heavy rains in the Himalayan region and the state’s own torrential downpours, had begun to recede by the last week of September. What remains is a trail of devastation. Village after village bears the scars with fields smothered under layers of silt and sand, homes reduced to shells and farmers, once proud custodians of India’s food bowl, now speaking of debt, hunger and uncertainty.

In just over a fortnight, more than 2,500 villages were submerged, affecting nearly 400,000 farmers, according to government data. The deluge destroyed crops on over 200,000 hectare (ha) of cultivable land, killed nearly 1,000 large animals and 35,000 poultry and left behind layers of sand that make farming impossible for the coming season. Fifty-eight people lost their lives (see “Plan or perish”, Down To Earth, 16-30 September, 2025).

In the villages of Machhiwal and Ghonewala in Amritsar district, which were swallowed by the waters of Ravi river on August 26 after an embankment collapsed, life has come to a grinding halt. The floodwaters have left behind knee-deep silt inside all the houses of the villages. "The structures are no longer habitable,” says Attar Singh, a resident of Ghone- wala. He had planted paddy in al- most 2 ha and sugarcane in another 4 ha this season. Today, his fields remain waterlogged and the crops have completely rotted.

Sukhman Preet, another farmer in Ghonewala, points to what was once his 0.6-ha sugarcane field. It is now buried under nearly a metre of sand. “How will we remove this? There has been no help,” he asks.