Punjab holds the four snakes responsible for most Indian snakebite deaths: the spectacled cobra, the common krait, Russell's viper and the saw-scaled viper.
India records tens of thousands of snakebite deaths a year, the highest of any country, overwhelmingly among agricultural workers, overwhelmingly at night or during harvest, and overwhelmingly treatable if antivenom is reached in time.
Punjab's figures are lower than the eastern states' but the pattern is the same: the bite happens in a field or on a floor, the first stop is a traditional healer or a jhar phook practitioner, and the hospital comes second.
The cobra is worshipped. Gugga Pir is a snake deity with shrines outside most villages and the largest gathering associated with him, the Chhapar mela near Ludhiana, draws several lakh people.
A society that has a snake shrine at the edge of every village and a snakebite mortality problem is not being inconsistent; the shrines exist because the problem is old.
Antivenom supply at primary health centres in rural Punjab is not reliably documented anywhere.
The cobra, the krait, the Russell's viper and the saw-scaled viper are the four that matter, and the krait is the one that kills people in their sleep on the floor in summer.
Snakebite deaths in India are counted in the tens of thousands a year and the Punjab figure is not separately reliable. Most deaths happen because the victim goes to a traditional healer first.
Antivenom is available at district hospitals and the delay is the problem, not the supply. A person bitten at night in a village is an hour or more from the nearest dose.