Is India plumbing the depths of groundwater?-OxBig News Network

India is the world’s largest groundwater guzzler. It extracted around 245 billion cubic metres (BCM) for irrigating cropland alone in 2011 – about 25% of the world’s groundwater consumption. More recently, as of 2023, the annual groundwater recharge was around 449 BCM while the extraction rate was 241 BCM, meaning India is drawing roughly 60% of whatever groundwater is available every year.

According to a 2023 report prepared by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), the number of over-exploited assessment units — where the rate of extraction exceeded the rate of recharge — stood at 11.2% of 6,553 units in 2023.

Of course, national trends obfuscate more worrisome regional ones. India’s groundwater crisis becomes most apparent when we take a closer look at its use for agriculture and to quench the thirst of the country’s burgeoning urban populace. The 2023 report found that 91% of the groundwater is extractable; the rest is natural discharge. And of the annual extraction, irrigation and domestic consumption divert 87% and 11% respectively. Only 2% is for industrial use.

The water tour

The bulk of India’s groundwater-stressed areas lie in North and Central India, plus some parts of interior Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Punjab and Haryana: Satellite-based studies have found that between 2003 and 2020, Punjab and Haryana lost 64.6 BCM of groundwater. Between 2002 and 2021, groundwater levels dropped by 70% across all monitored wells in Punjab, with the water table plummeting by more than 4 metres.

The tubewell is a common sight in the paddy fields of Punjab. It uses a motor to pump water up through a bore and into a temporary reservoir on the surface. From there, the water flows to the fields. Three-fourths (72%) of Punjab’s irrigated area today bank on tubewells. The State also provides subsidised or free electricity to power these tubewells, among other appliances, in order to make farming in this region more profitable. But over the years, the pendulum of the region’s water dependence has swung the other way. Rather than keep farming viable for farmers, as envisaged at the start of the Green Revolution, Punjab and Haryana have rendered water-intensive agriculture the norm.

Punjab alone has 15 lakh tubewells today, up from 1.9 lakh in 1970, extracting 4.4 BCM per week at their peak. Nearly 80% of Punjab’s blocks are thus classified as ‘over-exploited’: in 2023, it drew 164 units of water for every 100 units recharged. In many districts in central Punjab, the average drop in the water table is 0.5 m per year. Many farmers have responded by simply digging deeper. In Sangrur, farmers have reportedly drilled 55 m over 20 years. Likewise, Haryana draws around 136 units of water for every 100 units recharged. Just between 2017 and 2023, the number of ‘over-exploited’ blocks in the State grew by 11 percentage points.

Removing groundwater also leaves water more loaded with mineral salts and heavy metals. Both independent and government-conducted tests in the two States have reported the presence of excess uranium, arsenic, and chloride and fluoride ions in many locations. In Haryana’s southern districts, the groundwater has already been declared unfit for drinking.

Uttar Pradesh: The upper Ganga-Yamuna doab and the surrounding areas of western Uttar Pradesh also practice water-intensive agriculture and experience groundwater stress. Uttar Pradesh as a whole is extracting 71 units of water for every 100 units recharged but there is a sharp contrast between its eastern and western regions. Almost all ‘over-exploited’ blocks in the State are in its west, per a 2020 report of the CGWB. In some districts in the region, the water table has dropped by more than 20 m in the last few decades.

There are two sets of reasons. One is as in Punjab/Haryana: large areas under paddy and wheat, more land being devoted to cultivating sugarcane (which is even more water-intensive), unchecked use of tubewells, and subsidised electricity for pumps. The other is region-specific: Uttar Pradesh’s groundwater is also stressed to a significant degree by urbanisation (see next section). Together, in 2017, about 11% of the State’s blocks were ‘over-exploited’.

Policies to conserve water and the occasionally strong monsoon have reversed trends for short periods but the long-term prognosis is clear: western Uttar Pradesh is on thin ice. Eastern Uttar Pradesh receives more rain and its rivers have more volume, so its aquifers often recharge faster than they are depleted.

Rajasthan: Rajasthan presents a more troubling picture. It is drawing 149 units of water for every 100 units replenished and it is already India’s driest State. This combination renders its loss of water more critical. A 2022 government report concluded that 203 out of 249 blocks in the State were either ‘critical’ or ‘over-exploited’.

What little rice Rajasthan cultivates is fed by canal water and the bulk of the water it draws from the ground is diverted to sustain rural households and livelihoods. Cotton, wheat, and mustard crops in northwest and central Rajasthan are watered by tubewells. Bhilwara and Tonk in southeast Rajasthan enjoy relatively more rain but also spend more of that water to keep up double-cropping.

Fluoride and salt contamination are common in Rajasthan’s deep aquifers. In some parts, the prevalence of fluorosis — when a body ingests too much fluoride-heavy water, resulting in significant damage to bones and joints — is almost double the national average.

There have been some positive developments as well. The State has pioneered rainwater harvesting and artificial recharge; State-led programmes such as the ‘Mukhyamantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan’ have encouraged the building of thousands of village ponds. Rajasthan is thus one of a few States where water levels in more than half of all monitored wells (51.7%) have been improving over time.

Maharashtra: According to the CGWB, Maharashtra extracts 54 units of groundwater for every 100 units recharged; in 2023, only 2.5% of its 350+ talukas were classified as ‘over-exploited’. But the State’s central and western areas paint a different picture. The southwest monsoon has repeatedly ‘failed’ over Marathwada in particular and every time it has, the region has suffered a full-blown water crisis. Groundwater is directly affected as a result, more so since the region also hosts cash crops like cotton and sugarcane.

According to reports, farmers in parts of Marathwada have sunk borewells down to 90 m or more in the last three decades. In some areas of Beed, the water table is now more than a quarter of a kilometre deep. In 2016, Marathwada was so water-stressed the government had to transport water by train to Latur district.

On the other hand, water-intensive agriculture afflicts many parts of west Maharashtra. Ahmednagar, Pune, Sangli, Solapur, and Satara form a near-contiguous irrigated belt to feed numerous sugarcane farms and sugar mills. While this “sugar belt” has some dams and canals, most of the water comes through borewells, especially in summer. In and around Nasik and Pune, grape and pomegranate cultivation has expanded as well, driving an increase in the number of tubewells.

According to the CGWB, around 16% of talukas in the State are ‘semi-critical’ and 5% are ‘critical’ or ‘over-exploited’.

Tamil Nadu: Tamil Nadu’s water needs are met predominantly by groundwater and the northeast monsoon. And it is telling that even in its delta districts, including Nagapattinam, water levels in almost all monitored wells have often been observed to fall between pre-monsoon and post-monsoon checkpoints, meaning even rainfall has not been able to staunch extraction.

One study estimated that between 2002 and 2012, the State’s extraction exceeded recharge by 8%. By 2017, levels in around 89% of monitored wells in the State were dropping, led by districts in its north and west. For example, in 2013-2017, the number of ‘over-exploited’ blocks in Tiruvallur increased by 75%.

In July 2024, Minister of State for Jal Shakti Rajbhushan Choudhary said in the Rajya Sabha: “In order to assess the long-term fluctuation in groundwater level in Tamil Nadu, the water-level data collected by CGWB in Tamil Nadu during November 2023 has been compared with the decadal mean water levels for the month of November from 2013 to 2022. … Analysis of water level data indicated that about 72.6% of the wells monitored registered a rise in groundwater levels.”

But a longer long-term trend points the other way. In 2024, of 14.45 BCM of groundwater extracted every year in the State, 13.51 BCM was used for irrigation. Some urban pockets including Chennai are also overdrawing groundwater but as industrial needs are of late being met more by surface water and desalination, agriculture remains the principal concern.

Dry-season cropping is almost entirely watered by groundwater because, unlike in North India, the State receives the bulk of its rain in the winter. By the mid-2020s, 106 talukas out of 313 assessed were ‘over-exploited’. There has been a gradual shift in cropping patterns: farmers in drier areas have been favouring less water-intensive crops such as millets, pulses, and maize while some others switched from sugarcane to cotton or horticulture watered by drip irrigation. But the bulk of agriculture in the State is focused on water-intensive cash crops.

Thirsty cities

By 2015, groundwater was the sole source of water for more than 630 urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from Meerut and Agra, Allahabad, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Moradabad, Saharanpur, and Varanasi have been tending deeper into ‘critical’ or ‘over-exploited’ status in recent years. In Barmer, Jaisalmer, and Jodhpur of west Rajasthan, deep wells and stepwells are already overdrawn to support their growing populations.

This part of the State also contains the Thar desert, which means the natural subterranean sources of water are ‘fossil water’: water that accumulated here when the region’s climate was different from what it is today and has not been recharged over time.

In the west, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Rajkot in Gujarat and Pune and Nagpur in Maharashtra are growing too fast for their groundwater reserves to keep up. While Mumbai subsists on surface reservoirs, the demand for groundwater in nearby Thane and Navi Mumbai is booming — echoing the plight of Noida and Gurugram near Delhi. Similar narratives are also playing out in Indore, Bhopal, and Dehradun.

In Patna, urban sprawl and inadequate surface water distribution are the main drivers. Both Kolkata’s and Nagapattinam’s groundwater has become saline because over-extraction has allowed water from the Bay of Bengal to flow inward. Such seawater threatens Kochi and Visakhapatnam as well.

Bengaluru’s recent growth has cut ahead of its water infrastructure. All blocks in the district are ‘over-exploited’. In March 2024, Indian Institute of Science researchers reported that in five decades, Bengaluru’s built-up area had increased by 1,055% at the expense of 79% of its lake surface area. Many lakes that still remain are also highly polluted. The city’s newer suburbs do not yet have connections to water from the Cauvery river, so they also resort to borewells. During an uncharacteristically hot passage in early 2024, it emerged that half of the city’s 14,000 or so borewells were dry despite some having plunged to 450 m.

Chennai is also a coastal metro like Mumbai, yet as of 2023 it was drawing 127.5% of its annual groundwater recharge. This is alarming even if it is better than the 133% in 2022. All but five of the city’s 51 revenue blocks were ‘over-exploited’. The amount of water in its main reservoirs remains dependent on seasonal rainfall. Among India’s States, Tamil Nadu adopted mandatory rainwater harvesting early, in 2003, and has also installed many new desalination plants, yet Chennai’s groundwater levels remain precarious.

Hyderabad is somewhat better placed with large reservoirs and an arguably better piped network — yet groundwater levels dropped 2-7 m between 2023 and 2024 alone in parts of Greater Hyderabad.

Tragedy of the commons

The Green Revolution encouraged farmers to rotate crops between rice and wheat to improve India’s food security in the 1960s. But even as farmers came to depend on these crops, their capital costs increased. Rice is particularly ill-suited for the region’s semi-arid climate. A 2002 study from researchers at Wageningen University estimated that “it takes 3,000-5,000 litres to produce 1 kg of rice, … about two- to three-times more than to produce 1 kg of other cereals such as wheat or maize.”

Land under rice and sugarcane monocultures also consumes water throughout the year rather than being allowed to switch between water-intensive and water-sparse crops (like millets and pulses). This stress is compounded by inefficient cropping and irrigation practices. Most farmers in the country still use flood irrigation to water their fields: even if some of this water percolates into the ground, it is insufficient justification to extract it in the first place.

Many farmers also steer clear of micro-irrigation options and pump more water than the crops actually need. They also lose pumped water when it ‘leaks’ from poorly maintained canals and watercourses, which means farmers prefer using tubewells closer to their crops even when canal water is available. They have also been reluctant to adopt less water-intensive ways to cultivate rice.

Over the years, both the Union and State governments have removed economic signals to conserve water by providing subsidised electricity for agricultural use and through their procurement policies. Free or cheap power has allowed the area of land under crops to increase linearly with the number of pumps. There have even been reports of farmers in Punjab and Haryana running their pumps after their watering needs have been met just to exhaust their free power quota or to sell the water.

Second, prevailing support prices and state commitments to buy rice and wheat create a perverse incentive to grow them even in areas where they are unsuitable. Governments have also as a matter of convention supported credit policies that favour irrigation development, which has mainly taken the form of pumps rather than, say, drip or sprinkler systems. In all, state economic policies have separated groundwater over-extraction from its consequences.

Further, agriculture has combined with urbanisation of late to doubly stress groundwater reserves when previously only one stressor operated. As cities and towns expand, they sink more municipal wells and private boreholes into the ground. At a given depth below the surface, there is a finite and shared resource of water. If it is depleted, it is depleted for all possible users at once.

The Central Ground Water Authority has notified certain ‘over-exploited’ blocks where new commercial wells are banned — yet enforcement at the farm-level is also rare. According to the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank, “only about 14% of the overexploited blocks in the country” were notified as such in 2021.

Unlike with the country’s forests and aboveground water resources like rivers, community management of groundwater remains feeble. The resource is effectively at the mercy of crores of individual decisions building up to a tragedy of the commons: given the facts of drainage and cheap power, farmers often have an incentive to pump as much as they can to prevent others from ‘out-pumping’ them. On the flip side, wherever meaningful community-led action has arisen, groundwater over-extraction has stopped, if not turned around.

In fact, community-led action is crucial because of how over-extraction affects people. As the water table recedes from the surface, the power cost of pumping water increases. Farmers need stronger pumps (to handle the higher voltage but which also pollute the air more), longer pipes, bigger loans, and higher profits. Smallholders become particularly at risk of falling in debt.

The water they eventually pull up is of low quality. Such water has already been known to reduce crop yield in Punjab by 30%. Disappearing aquifers at specific strata turn perennial rivers seasonal. Trees’ roots stop finding water, leading to more erosion, worse floods, and more arid land. Open land and wetlands are replaced by concrete and asphalt, causing rainwater to become surface runoff rather than refill for aquifers. Cities tax water use, leaving the poorer in the lurch. People migrate away. State economics shrink, incomes fall, and families are displaced. Even the land may buckle and subside.

What to the rescue?

Governments have met India’s groundwater crisis with a panoply of policies, programmes, rules, and regulations to varying degrees of success. Their collective aims are to increase supply, reduce demand, and regulate consumption.

Chief among them is the Union government’s Atal Bhujal Yojana, a.k.a. Atal Jal. Launched in 2020 with an outlay of ₹6,000 crore over five years, the scheme focuses on building community-led groundwater management in seven target States that together contain a third of India’s most water-stressed blocks (but it excludes Punjab). Access to its funds is tied to improving groundwater levels and community-led adoption of water-saving practices. By early 2023, the scheme had released around a fifth of its funds, pointing to sluggish uptake, probably due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If the scheme scales up as intended, its biggest upside will be decentralising action to improve groundwater levels.

Second, the Union and State governments mooted the Jal Shakti Abhiyan in 2019. Every year, the mission identifies water-stressed districts and helps enhance rainwater harvesting, maintenance and repair of traditional water bodies and watersheds, and the forest cover there. In 2024, the mission identified 151 water-stressed districts. According to official data, the mission erected 98 lakh water-harvesting and -recharging structures across India between 2019 and 2023.

Third, the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana is a national scheme to improve water-use efficiency in agriculture. Since 2015, when it was launched, it has been facilitating subsidies for micro-irrigation and other techniques. Under the Yojana’s ‘Per Drop More Crop’ plan, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, more than 52 lakh hectares around the country have been covered with drip and sprinkler irrigation systems. The Yojana also includes incentives to replace areas under paddy with maize and pulses, plus purchase commitments.

In the same vein, Haryana’s ‘Mera Pani Meri Virasat’ scheme pays farmers ₹2,800 per hectare to switch from paddy to other crops in water-stressed blocks. According to State data, some 23,000 hectares in Haryana were diversified in 2022-2023 with this incentive. The Punjab State Power Corporation, Ltd. has also launched the ‘Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao’ scheme whereby it directly rewards farmers who consume less power.

In parallel, the CGWB has been mapping the country’s aquifers. By 2023, it had covered 25 lakh sq. km with information about their depth and spread, volumes, and quality characteristics. The Board’s 2020 Master Plan for Artificial Recharge included a roadmap to install 1.4 crore structures to harness 185 BCM of rainwater across the country. In its current phase, the mapping exercise is focusing on developing solutions for areas classified as ‘over-exploited’ and/or where the groundwater quality is poor.

Finally, regulations. In 2020, the Union government revised its guidelines to tighten norms surrounding groundwater extraction for industrial and infrastructural use, especially in ‘over-exploited’ areas. They required industries, urban utilities, and large housing projects to receive ‘no objection certificates’ only if they also met conditions to harvest rainwater and restore groundwater. Bylaws in Chennai and Mumbai require all large buildings to have rainwater harvesting structures and functional recharge pits. With help from NGOs, Pune has mapped its aquifers to control groundwater extraction at the neighborhood level.

To bolster State-level enforcement, Raj Bhushan Choudhary, the Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti, said in 2024 that the Ministry had circulated a “model Bill to all the States/UTs to enable them to enact suitable groundwater legislation for regulation of its development, which also includes provision of rainwater harvesting. So far, 21 States/UTs have adopted and implemented the groundwater legislation, including the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh”.

In Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, new wells need to be registered with the respective State government. In Gujarat, the Jyotigram Yojana aims to provide 24-hour, three-phase power supply to rural areas — and simultaneously limits the hours of supply to water pumps. Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana also have State-level schemes that promote community-led restoration of water tanks to save more rainwater and mitigate surface runoff.