THE heat wave that sent a large part of North India to the sick bed proved to be an occasion for joy to farmers in the Punjab-Haryana belt: it melted snow at the sources of the rivers in the northwest, which will fill the reservoirs at the Bhakra Nangal and Pong dams to capacity -- plenty of water to meet the irrigation and power needs of the country's Northern states. And if the monsoon arrives on time, Punjab and Haryana, India's grain bowls, could harvest a record yield yet again.

Data provided by the National Remote Sensing Agency at Hyderabad shows that the melting of snow in the Sutlej river's catchment area could provide 17.5 lakh cusec days of water for the Bhakra reservoir, as against the 16 lakh cusec days provided last year.