In India, the Bhakra Dam is built around the river Sutlej to provide irrigation and other facilities to the states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana.

[4] The mean annual flow is 14 million acre feet (MAF) (roughly 1.727 × 1013 L) upstream of Ropar barrage, downstream of the Bhakra dam.

The drainage basin in India includes the states and union territories of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Ladakh and Haryana.

[7][8] The source of the Sutlej is west of the catchment area of Lake Rakshastal in Tibet, as springs in an ephemeral stream.

It then has its main knee heading west-southwest for about 360 kilometres (220 mi) to meet the Beas River near Harike, Tarn Taran district, Punjab state.

[12] Langqên Zangbo (Tibetan: གླང་ཆེན་གཙང་པོ, Wylie: glang chen gtsang po; Chinese: 朗钦藏布; pinyin: Lǎngqīn Zàngbù) is a river in Ngari, Tibet, China.

[17][citation needed] If the diversion of the river occurred recently (about 4000 years ago), it may have been responsible for the Ghaggar-Hakra (Saraswati) drying up, causing desertification of Cholistan and the eastern part of the modern state of Sindh, and the abandonment of Harappan settlements along the Ghaggar.

[citation needed] There is some evidence that the high rate of erosion caused by the modern Sutlej River has influenced the local faulting and rapidly exhumed rocks above Rampur.

[19] There has been a proposal to build a 214-kilometre (133 mi) long heavy freight and irrigation canal, to be known as the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) to connect the Sutlej and Yamuna rivers.

[20] The project is intended to connect the Ganges, which flows to the east coast of the subcontinent, with points west, via Pakistan.

When completed, the SYL would enable inland shipping from India's east coast to its west coast (on the Arabian sea) without having to round the southern tip of India by sea, vastly shortening shipping distances, alleviating pressures on seaports, avoiding sea hazards, creating business opportunities along the route, raising real estate values, raising tax revenue, and establishing important commercial links and providing jobs for north-central India's large population.

To augment nearly 100 tmcft (some 2.832 × 1012 L) water availability for the needs of this link canal, Tso Moriri lake/Lingdi Nadi (a tributary of Tso Moriri lake) waters can be diverted to the Sutlej basin by digging a 10 km=long gravity canal to connect to the Ungti Chu river.