Punjab, with a geographical area of 50,362 sq km and a population of 2.77 crore as per Census 2011, is the sixteenth most populous state in India and one of its smallest by area, contributing about 1.5 percent of the national land mass while supporting roughly 2.3 percent of its population. The state has 23 districts and a population density of 551 persons per sq km, among the highest in the country. Punjab shares an international border with Pakistan and internal borders with Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, and its capital, Chandigarh, is a shared Union Territory with Haryana. The economy remains predominantly agrarian, anchored in the paddy wheat cropping cycle that powered the Green Revolution, but this legacy has produced acute groundwater stress. The state's own 2025-26 assessment placed groundwater extraction at 152.22 percent of the annually extractable resource, and in a statement to the Rajya Sabha on 9 March 2026, Member of Parliament Satnam Singh Sandhu said that 19 of the state's 23 districts fall under the groundwater dark zone; the department-wise section below sets out the underlying block-level CGWB data in more detail.
