Punjab sits on the alluvium of a plain formed by the collision that is still raising the Himalaya, and its northern districts are in a zone of significant seismic hazard.
The Kangra earthquake of 4 April 1905, magnitude around 7.8, killed roughly twenty thousand people across the Kangra valley and wrecked Kangra fort, which a thousand years of sieges had left standing. Damage extended into the Punjab plain.
Deep alluvium amplifies ground shaking, which means the plain's soft soils are not the safe ground they look like.
Punjab's building stock is now overwhelmingly reinforced concrete and brick built without engineering supervision, in towns with no enforcement of building codes.
There has been no major earthquake in the region since 1905, which means the entire modern built environment of Punjab is untested.
This is the largest unaddressed physical risk in the state and it is not discussed at all.
Punjab lies across seismic zones three and four, with the northern districts in the higher of the two. The zoning is on the map and it is not in the building practice.
The 1905 earthquake was felt across the plain and damaged buildings as far as Lahore. Its source is close enough to Punjab's northern districts to matter.
There is no seismic retrofitting programme for public buildings in Punjab and no enforcement of the building code in rural construction, which is where most people live.