India, Dec. 25 -- Many Punjabis feel that the state no longer carries the prestige and political influence it enjoyed in the 1980s, when India's food security depended on it. The loss of clout has little to do with having just 13 MPs. The rise of a government-aided agrarian economy over the years has eroded the leverage once Punjab enjoyed.

For nearly three decades after the Green Revolution, Punjab occupied a position of rare national centrality. Its wheat and paddy fields did more than sustain local prosperity; they underwrote India's food security. In the 1970s and 1980s, Punjab alone supplied well over half of the wheat procured for the central pool and a substantial share of rice. Along with Haryana, it accounted for nearly three-fo...