Over Dependency on Groundwater in India: Issues and Insights

Abstract

The present analysis shows that there is no compatibility between annual rainfall, annual recharge, annual draft, and the number of OCS blocks indicating serious discrepancies in the available information. Apart from this, different groundwater assessments from 2004 show no significant increase in annual groundwater draft, according to a report from the United Nation, groundwater abstraction continued to rise sharply in India. It is also observed that though, there is no significant change in the long-period average annual rainfall of the country, in general, the states in the northwest and central India, like Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh are facing a remarkable downward trend in seasonal (monsoonal) and annual rainfalls both. The states of the country’s western region, like Rajasthan and Gujrat, are witnessing an upward trend in both seasonal (monsoonal) and annual rainfalls. States of southern India are not much affected. Due to declining rainfall in some of the major food grain-producing states, the balance of water distribution in the country is shifting and it may become more prominent in the years to come. India is already the largest abstractor of groundwater in the world and in the above scenario, there will be tremendous pressure on groundwater in the future. This calls for out-of-the-box solutions for groundwater restoration in India. The suggested actions which may counter the looming water crisis in the country, particularly in north-western and central Indian states, include increasing forest cover up to 20% in the next 25 years in poorly forested states, limiting area under water-guzzling greenhouse producing gas crops, starting land subsidence survey in cities, limiting groundwater abstraction and injecting water into aquifers, launching group schemes of drip and sprinkler irrigation on a large scale using existing tube-wells/wells, searching the alternative source of water by developing integrated facilities to retrieve, treat, store, and transport wastewater, transferring groundwater from groundwater surplus areas to scarce areas, enacting comprehensive central law on groundwater, improving water and agriculture resource efficiency through the Internet of Things, cloud and sensor-based network, mapping and time-bound renovation of large traditional water bodies (>1 hectare), revisiting groundwater assessment methodology and norms, quantifying static groundwater resource, developing heat tolerant and less water consuming crops and changing food habits.