The Punjabi Sahit Akademi at Ludhiana, founded in 1954, the Punjabi Academy at Delhi, the Sahitya Akademi's Punjabi programme, and the language departments of the two Punjabi universities are the institutional support for Punjabi literature in India.
Between them they give prizes, buy books for libraries, hold conferences and publish. The total sums involved are small and the effect of a single institutional purchase decision on a Punjabi publisher's viability is large.
The Punjab Languages Department, set up to promote Punjabi in administration and education, has produced dictionaries and reference works and has been chronically underfunded.
In Pakistan there is the Pakistan Academy of Letters, which covers all languages, and there is no dedicated Punjabi institution of comparable standing, which is the material fact behind the difference between the two literatures.
A literature this size supported at this level is a volunteer effort with an occasional grant attached.
A Punjabi book's print run is a few hundred copies to a thousand, and an institutional purchase of two hundred for libraries is the difference between the publisher covering the printing and not covering it. That is the scale the whole thing runs at, and it is why one official's decision matters as much as it does.
The Languages Department publishes, awards and administers the official language rules, and its enforcement of Punjabi in government use has been intermittent for fifty years.
In Pakistan there is no state body for Punjabi at all. What exists is private: a literary board, a few university departments and a small number of publishers.