The water table falls. The Preservation of Subsoil Water Act in 2009 pushes paddy transplanting later and lengthens the stubble burning season. The Malwa's health reporting produces the phrase cancer train.
The Kali Bein is restored by volunteers from 2000. The Ravidassia community declares a separate religion in 2010 after the killing of Sant Ramanand in Vienna in 2009.
New districts: Mohali and Barnala in 2006, Tarn Taran in 2006, Fazilka and Pathankot in 2011, Malerkotla in 2021.
The Bargari sacrilege and the Behbal Kalan firing in 2015, and a decade of unresolved proceedings. Writers return their awards.
The Kartarpur corridor opens in 2019. The farm laws protest runs from 2020 to 2021 and the laws are repealed. The Aam Aadmi Party wins 92 of 117 seats in 2022 and the two-party system of sixty years ends.
Emigration accelerates. Punjab sends more students to Canada than any other Indian state and villages in the Doaba empty.
None of the questions left open in 1966 has been settled.
The water table kept falling, the emigration accelerated, the drug crisis became the dominant public issue, and the industry that Punjab had did not grow.
The farm law protests of 2020 and 2021 put Punjabi farmers at the centre of Indian politics for a year and ended in the repeal of the laws.
The 2022 election broke a sixty year political pattern. What has not changed in twenty five years is the water, the debt, or the number of young people leaving.