The floodwaters have left Punjab with a paradox. Vast stretches of farmland are buried under cheap sand that farmers are struggling to clear, even as the state’s riverbeds hold sand officially valued at hundreds of crores.

Water Resources Minister Barinder Kumar Goyal says riverbeds along the Sutlej and Ravi contain an estimated 190 crore cubic feet of sand, valued at Rs 840 crore. But the calculation behind this figure remains unclear. Market prices currently vary widely, from Rs 1 per cubic foot in inundated villages to Rs 32 to 40 per cubic foot in areas unaffected by flooding. How the government arrived at a uniform valuation of Rs 4.42 per cubic foot has not been explained.

The floods also exposed inconsistencies in river-flow data. The Ravi touched a record 14.11 lakh cusecs in lat

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