In Punjab: flooded fields, uneasy minds

Through September 2025, Veena Rani, 24, barely slept. She would lie for hours on a string cot, eyes shut, replaying memories of the previous month’s flood that swallowed her family’s farmland and seeped into their home in Walle Shah Uttar village, in Punjab’s Fazilka district.

“I am doing better than before,” Veena says, swallowing her bed-time medicine. Their three-room pucca house, set amid farms outside the main village, lies close to a creek of the Sutlej. It looks calm from their home, but the creek runs eight feet deep. Across it is their four-acre farm.

“She stopped laughing,” says Veena’s sister Kailash Rani, 26. Their father Jarnael Singh, 52, recounts how she would start crying if they forced her to sit up.

“All I could think was how we would get money now that the crop was gone, how long the water would stay, would we even be able to sow wheat next season,” Veena says. She struggled to explain when loved ones enquired what was making her anxious. “It was like something heavy pressing on my head.”

Everyone in the village was distressed by the floods, and Veena thought it would pass.

It didn’t. As she grew more withdrawn and listless, the family took her to a psychiatrist 50 kilometres away in Abohar, where she was diagnosed with depression, and prescribed medication for five months.

She was sobbing even at the clinic. “Dimaag di nassa kamzor ho gayi ne [the nerves of my brain have become weak],” she says.

Three kilometres from their home, the Sutlej zigzags across the India–Pakistan border. Flooding is common in about a dozen villages here, with devastating floods in 1955, 1988, 2023 and in 2025.

In August 2025, heavy rains across northern India caused the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers to breach their banks. Farmland and villages were submerged, affecting 2,500 villages, 40 people died. Close to 5 lakh acres of farmland were damaged, including over 37,000 acres in Fazilka district alone.

Among the submerged fields were the four acres belonging to Veena’s family. Their basmati rice crop was anticipated to fetch at least Rs. 80,000 per acre, money they would rely on all year.

“Now we will have to take a loan again for our education,” Veena says, forcing a tight-lipped smile.

She and her younger brother are training to become electrical technicians. Steady jobs with monthly salaries of Rs. 30,000 each can finally free the family from a “cycle of borrowing,” Veena says.

Paddy is the family’s sole income source; wheat is mostly for home consumption. Now completely destroyed, there is nothing to salvage from their paddy fields.

“The next two years are ruined,” Veena says, her sunken eyes fixed on the still-submerged farmland. With nothing to take to the market, current loan repayments will stall, a fresh loan will be unavoidable, and capital for next year’s crop will be hard to find.

The walls of their home are damp up to knee level. The mud floor is sodden in patches. “We were at home when the water entered. When it began rising, we left for Ladhuke grain market, six kilometres away. Only their father stayed back, living on the roof,” says Prakash Kaur, 51, Veena’s mother. She is preparing pinnis (sweet laddoos) from donated rations.

Veena, who once worked part-time as a beautician, now doesn’t step outside the home. Her younger brother, Sukhchain Singh, 22, was also struggling. Teachers called repeatedly about Rs. 5,000 in pending fees, and he eventually took up work at a road construction site, earning Rs. 500 a day. “I dealt with stress by working. By the time I’d return home, I’d be exhausted,” he says.

Across Punjab’s flood-hit villages, people are grappling not only with the loss of homes and crops but also with anxiety, sleeplessness, depression and post-traumatic stress.

Their experiences echo warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that extreme weather is taking a toll on mental health.

Yet, the crisis remains largely invisible, overshadowed by the urgency to rebuild lives. “The patients we are seeing are just the tip of the iceberg, not even a fraction of what the community is going through,” says Dr. Rupinder Oberoi, a psychiatrist in Gurdaspur, another flood-affected district.

In Punjab’s border villages, mental health care is both hard to access and stigmatised. People turn first to spiritual healers, approaching psychiatrists only when symptoms become severe, doctors say.

Many families here belong to the Rai Sikh community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste in Punjab. For women, barriers are even higher, for treatment depends on whether someone can accompany them and if there is money to spare. “Women tend to report distress earlier than men,” Dr. Oberoi says. “But without family support, they simply can’t access care.”

It took Veena weeks to see a psychiatrist. She travelled by three-wheeler to Fazilka, then by bus to Abohar, and again by three-wheeler to reach the clinic. The community health centre three kilometres from her home, and even the civil hospital 20 kilometres away, were never considered. “The doctors there don’t care enough,” Veena says.

At the state-run Hastan Kalan health centre, doctors confirm they have received no patients seeking mental health care since the floods.

“Patients are coming in with low mood, loss of interest, depression, PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] and adjustment disorders,” says Dr. Pikashi Arora, psychiatrist at the government-run civil hospital in Fazilka. She estimates a 20 per cent rise in depression and anxiety cases since the floods. “Many more are suffering silently. They don’t want to talk about mental health in front of others.”

Psychiatric care in Punjab, doctors say, is already stretched thin. “Government hospitals are flooded with substance-use cases,” says Abohar-based psychiatrist Dr. Ramesh Arora, who treats Veena. Dr. Siddharth Kalucha, who practises at the civil hospitals in Fazilka and Jalalabad, says the “opium epidemic” brings a heavy load of de-addiction cases due to which mental health patients get neglected.

On the opposite bank of the Sutlej creek, in Walle Shah Hithar, Paramjeet Kaur, 30, was rolling out chapatis when her sister-in-law, Rajo Bai, burst in screaming that day in August 2025, “The water is coming!”

Unaware how quickly it would rise, Paramjeet replied lightly, “Bachon ko bhookha thori marna hai [we can’t let the children stay hungry].” She laughs now at the memory of her misplaced calm. “Within minutes, the water reached us,” she says. The two women grabbed all five children and waded to her in-law’s house in the main village, built four feet higher after the 2013 floods.

When her husband, Harbans Singh, 38, a driver transporting farm produce to the city, returned home, he and his elder brother, Darshan Singh, tried to salvage belongings by boat. However, an electric current rippled through the water from a nearby transformer and the local gurdwara warned everyone to stay away.

Paramjeet had never seen a flood before. She married Harbans in the winter of 2023, three years after her first husband died of a drug overdose. She has a six-year-old daughter from that marriage. Harbans also has a 15-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son from his first marriage.

Behind their home, the half-acre of paddy Paramjeet had transplanted herself, lay submerged.

For weeks, they visited the house daily as water gradually receded. “Water had soaked the bricks. When the sun hit them, they crumbled,” she says. “Just looking at the house gave me tension. I couldn’t sleep at night. I would sit awake and think, jithe dhayan ho jae [wherever my mind wandered].”

When her insomnia worsened, Harbans took her to a private psychiatrist in Fazilka city. “Dimaag di nassa tey dabav pe gaya hai [the nerves of your brain are under strain],” she recalls the doctor telling her. Paramjeet was prescribed medicines twice daily, but she takes only one tablet at night to sleep.

“My year-old daughter is still breastfeeding. If I take too much medicine, it affects her too,” she says, sitting on her haunches inside what remains of the home while her toddler picks at the mud on the floor.

A month of medication restored her sleep, but a deep unrest turned her towards faith. Paramjeet now visits a nearby Sufi shrine every Thursday, and is convinced that the spirit of her late first husband is responsible for her troubles. Her parents-in-law maintain the shrine. The family believes that a baba (a man of god) who once appeared in her mother-in-law’s dream heals those who seek his help.

“We were already a poor family, and now God has done this to us,” Paramjeet says, also directing her frustration at government officials for not cleaning the waterways. There is no anger in her voice, only helplessness, as she says the family survives on aid from NGOs and farm unions. “No one can give food every day,” she says.

The state announced compensation of about Rs. 20,000 per acre for damaged crops and Rs. 1,20,000 for destroyed homes. It is far from enough, many families say.

According to doctors, financial precarity is a serious stressor for flood survivors, and also a major reason to delay treatment. “With so much financial stress, mental health takes a back seat,” Dr. Oberoi says. “What people need right now is immediate financial help to rebuild their homes and prepare their land for the next crop.”

In January 2026, in response to questions from PARI, Rohini Goyal, Deputy Director (Mental Health Branch), wrote to all district civil surgeons and deputy medical commissioners directing that flood-affected families be made aware of psychiatric services available at government hospitals and clinics. The department did not outline any flood-specific mental health protocols or outreach programmes.

Officials of the Department of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management told PARI that the state government had organised medical check-up camps for flood-affected people and had provided necessary facilities. The response did not indicate whether mental health support is part of disaster management protocols.

For Manpreet Kaur (name changed), the stress came from her five-year-old son’s unpaid school fees. Until a non-profit pitched in with the money three months later, every time the school sent a reminder, she would feel a “ghabrahat [anxiety]," says the 28-year-old resident of Jhangar Bhaini, another border village.

Her husband, who earns Rs. 7,000 a month at a local warehouse, has barely spoken since the floods. “He wouldn’t respond even if I ask for a hundred rupees to buy vegetables,” she says. Her parents-in-law could not help either, says Manpreet, breaking down. “All six acres of their crop was ruined.”

To keep the household running, Manpreet looked for work as a farm labourer, transplanting paddy, peeling or picking garlic, anything she could find that would earn her a few hundred rupees a day.

Before 2023, she had never worked in the fields. It was also the first time she had witnessed such floods, says the warm, quick-to-smile woman. She used to give tuitions to children, but with incomes devastated by the floods, parents in the village can no longer afford a tuition teacher.

“The water entered our fields and then receded. The paddy we had sown rotted, so we transplanted again. Then the water returned. That’s when the tension really began,” she recalls. The family had purchased seedlings from a nursery in Abohar to transplant their paddy. “The water came back and destroyed everything.” The family estimates their losses at nearly Rs. 5 lakh.

In both 2023 and 2025, Manpreet was at home when the floods came. “Over time, the more floods you see, the more you get used to it,” she says.

She can’t forget the severe migraines triggered by the stress from the 2023 floods. “My head would constantly hurt,” she says. “It was all because of the tension.” "There were days," she adds, “when I wanted to drown in the submerged fields outside our house.”

If you are suicidal or someone in distress please call Kiran, the national helpline, on 1800-599-0019 (24/7 toll free), or any of these helplines near you.

PARI's nationwide series on climate change and mental health is supported by the Mariwala Health Initiative. The series will investigate the impact of the climate crisis on the mental and overall health, and livelihoods of people in rural India and rural migrants in urban India.