Satellite imagery is free and has already answered several questions about Punjab that ground survey could not.
The palaeochannels of the Ghaggar-Hakra, which are the strongest evidence for a large river once running through what is now desert, were mapped from space. The distribution of Harappan mounds along them was checked the same way.
The stubble fire counts each autumn are satellite-derived and are the basis of the entire national argument about them.
Groundwater depletion across northern India was measured from space by the GRACE satellites, which showed the scale of the Punjab and Haryana loss before ground data had been assembled.
The alignment of the Mughal Grand Trunk Road, the courses of abandoned canals, the sites of deserted villages and the boundaries of the old bars are all visible in imagery and none has been systematically traced.
Anyone with a laptop can do this work. It requires no permission and no fieldwork and it is the one category of research on this list that is not limited by access to Punjab at all.
The fire counts each November come from satellites and are the most precise number anybody has about Punjab's agriculture, which is a comment on the rest of the data.
The night lights show the border fence as a continuous bright line and the cities as blocks. The groundwater satellites show the whole region as one of the fastest depleting aquifers on earth.
All of that imagery is free and public. Anybody in Punjab with a laptop can look at their own district's water, its cropping and its burning, and almost nobody does.