Most rural Punjab households draw drinking water from a hand pump or a submersible into the shallow or intermediate aquifer, which in a large number of villages is contaminated.
The contaminants documented in different parts of the state are uranium, arsenic, fluoride, selenium, nitrate, iron and heavy metals, and in the industrial belts a range of effluent-derived chemicals.
The state's responses have been reverse osmosis plants at village level, which work where they are maintained and fail where they are not, and canal-based piped water supply schemes, which are the more durable answer and are expensive.
The Jal Jeevan Mission has extended household tap connections substantially in recent years.
The underlying problem is that Punjab has been drawing down its aquifer for fifty years and the deeper it goes the more geogenic contamination it encounters.
A state that grows a fifth of India's wheat cannot reliably give its own villages clean water, and the two facts are connected.
Most Punjab villages now have a piped supply from a shared tubewell or from a canal based treatment plant, and the coverage figures are among the better ones in India.
Quality is the problem rather than coverage. Where the aquifer carries uranium, arsenic, fluoride or nitrate, the piped supply carries it too unless it is treated.
Reverse osmosis plants have been installed in a large number of villages, run by panchayats or by trusts. The maintenance and the disposal of the reject water are both unresolved.