Is India Over Extracting Groundwater? Sustainability Crisis and Solutions

The ground water crisis in India has been linked to water intensive agriculture and city needs; there has been attempt to use policy as a means to provide green and long term solutions to the crisis but there is dire need in terms of provision and enforcement of long term solutions.

The groundwater sources which were treated as an inexhaustible source of water in India are now yielding to stress. India extracts water to the tune of near about 25 percent of the total groundwater extracted in the world; and utilizes 60 percent of the annual recharged water with agriculture accounting the bulk of it. Such high reliance which has been highly entrenched in the Green Revolution practice and exacerbated by rapidly growing cities and the industrial revolution has forced many states into an area of severe overexploitation. Not only ecological, but also highly social consequences are the results: farmers experience enhanced uncertainty, populations in cities have to grapple with seasonal scarcities and ecosystems are getting more pressurized. To counter this, the governments have implemented the supply-side interventions such as the Atal Bhujal Yojana, encouraged the use of water-saving methods of irrigation and regulation. However the effect is loose. The inefficiencies associated with structural issues such as bias in subsidies, regulatory failure, inexistence of strong data, and low-level citizen engagement reverse the conservation efforts. This Article explores the extent of groundwater crisis in India. Since the changes in climatic patterns are altering hydrological cycles, the need to make prudent and integrated decisions has never been more demanding.

The Dependence on Ground water of India

Groundwater is becoming an important factor in the Indian economy as the economy is sustained by agriculture, drinking water and due to its unsustainable use and distorted developmental trends the groundwater is coming under extreme pressure.

Ground water
Covering more than 60 percent of India irrigation, almost 85 per cent of rural drinking water demands are met by groundwater under the surface. And it is that unseen supporting pillar that lends a hand to the production of food and the health of the people in a nation that experiences unpredictable monsoons and a rising level of climatic extremes. However, it has become an exhaustive store with its unrestricted usage. In the rice paddies of Punjab, to the industrial belts in Tamil Nadu, aquifers are being dug at a rate that is difficult to replenish.

Green Revolution and Agricultural Dependence
The use of groundwater in India is about 80-90% in the agricultural process, with a great proportion of the water being used on crops which require much water like paddy and sugarcane. Such states as Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh are economically prosperous because of the vast supply of free water to run their farms due to MSP systems and free electricity. But there are long-term risks to this short-term benefit as seen in some regions ground water tables have been dropping more than 1 meter a year.

Growing ground water stress
The rate of urbanization has also increased dependency on ground water in cities of India. Other big cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are busy supplying the home needs of large quantities, constructing homes and providing business requirements as well. With the gap between piped water supply and demand still growing, the number of borewells is on the increase with little or no regulation, check and balances. The outcome: our city aquifers are becoming minuscule, and the recharge undertakings grossly fall short.

Ecological and Social Costs
The extraction of a resource without control does not only lead to a decrease in its supply; it changes the ecological balance. Dipping ground water tables lead to land subsidence, bad water quality and conflict amongst users. To the marginalized, the crisis has become intense: marginalized groups usually do not have the access to or political voice in water governance and this breads the problem of a natural resource into a socio-economic divide in the making.

Over-extraction in Agriculture

Green Revolution
The food security that was brought about by green revolution in the 1960s planted the seeds of groundwater dependency. The big-yielding varieties of wheat and rice fostered in semi-arid regions such as the Punjab and Haryana where rainfall was deficient, but farmers used free electricity to pump ground water needlessly. It led to an irrigation boom made possible through farmer subsidies and resulted in India becoming self-sustaining in terms of agriculture at a cost of emptied aquifers. Groundwater tables in these areas have declined perilously to an extent of 1-3 meters per year as per the information provided by Central Ground Water Board.

Perverse incentives and the Subsidy
Water-intensive cropping patterns are still unrewarded by such policy structures. Subsidised or free electricity, assured guaranteed procurement through Minimum Support Prices (MSP) and absence of restrictions on borewell drilling has made pursuing water saving measures to be economically irrational to the farmers. This has led to a vicious cycle in the water-stressed areas as farmers are urged to bore deeper down to continue production, which further speeds the decline. Although there have been efforts to encourage the use of micro-irrigation, its uptake is very low especially by smallholders.

Opposition to Crop Diversification
One cannot ignore social and market constrains to less water-intensive crops like millets, pulses or oilseeds. The farmers do not make a shift easily without being assured of stable procurement of their produce, access to the markets, and profitability. Telangana and Maharashtra have diversified their schemes at the state level, although high degrees of emphasis have focused on the low adoption of large-scale and strong institutional support including price guarantees. Incentive change behaviour cannot be achieved without changing the structure of the way they are designed.

Urban and Industrial pressures

The quickly growing cities in India and industrial centres are straining overused groundwater systems that already have developed some strain, resulting in a complicated level of over-pumping, insufficient regulation, and recharging systems.

The Urban Groundwater Rush
With cities stretching beyond their infrastructural capabilities, groundwater has emerged as a default option in creating more capacity to satisfy an increasing demand of water. Large urban cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai are deeply furnished with local aquifers to provide steady water supply in the daily life particularly in case of unauthorized colonies and in the fringe rural limits where water supply through pipelines is either inaccessible or unreliable. This reliance has occasioned the mushrooming of illegal borewells with most of them going beyond the specified permissible depth and has resulted in aquifer depletion that has wrought quality deterioration. There are localities such as Chennai where overexploitation of ground water has resulted in nearby seas intruding salty water that makes all local sources unusable.

Regulatory Parts and Industrial Development
Outside the household, the industrial sector is a significant contributor of groundwater stress in India particularly in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. Industries which capture a lot of water may involve textile dyeing to bottling beverages, which may not follow the environmental clearances or may shift between their usages since they may not be kept under review. Specifically, the small and medium-scale enterprises are better left alone, whereas real estate developers keep constructing by digging borewells without any recharging strategy over the long haul. These withdrawals that are unregulated burden the already stressed aquifers due to the urban sprawls.

Recharge deficit
The mechanisms of urban recharge are lowly developed even as the extraction is increasing. There are rainwater harvesting laws which are poorly enforced and the urban wetlands natural recharge areas are commonly encroached or polluted. In addition, untapped potential of treated waste water, that could substitute fresh water sources, is highly under-exploited. As urban concentrations on the earth are cemented into a larger and larger area, the aquifers are now being pumped out at a rate that nature and the infrastructure cannot replace them.

Policy Responses: Supply, Demand and Regulation

Groundwater management in India has been developed by the different policy interventions in trying to balance the supply, minimize the demand and control the use of groundwater.

Recharge and Infrastructure
Governments have begun various initiatives to enhance ground water replenishment due to the declining water tables. Atal Bhujal Yojana is a flagship project which aims at promoting ground water management by the community in water-stressed districts. Besides, in most urban centres, it has been implemented by law to practice rainwater harvesting, yet it is not very well practiced in many locations. Artificial recharge structures such as check dams, percolation tanks and recharge wells are being promoted, but there is Spatio-temporal mismatch and their maintenance which is not good. Yet, in spite of such efforts, recharge infrastructure is not keeping up with the rate of extraction.

Demand-Side Measures
In order to prevent the excessive withdrawal the demand-side policies have aimed at promoting water efficient farming. The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) and the various sub-schemes thereunder such as Per Drop More Crop encourage the use of the technology of drip and sprinkler irrigation. Incentives in the form of subsidies have been provided by some states that encourage farmers to pick up the micro-irrigation technology or to take up crops that do not require so much water. Nonetheless, the adoption is still unequal as it is initially expensive and awareness about adopting it is inadequate and supply chains of equipment and maintenance are disorganized. In cities, water auditing and management of leakages are side-lined in the general planning.

Regulatory Tools
The regulation of groundwater strategy is weak in India. Extraction caps and registration of borewells were ordered by the central ground water board (CGWB) but implementation is barely existent and not legally binding in a number of states. Not many states are actually providing groundwater laws in the whole scope and on places that they have such laws they have weak capacity within their institutions to take effect. Additionally, central groundwater pricing system is non-existent and it does not encourage effective use.

Way Forward

Abandoning piecemeal efforts and adopting a clear, multi-layered framework to community-empowered, incentive-reform and ecologically resilient approaches will lead to sustainable groundwater management in India.

Re-evaluating Agricultural Damages
India needs to redesign its policy framework. Conversion of input-based subsidies (such as free electricity) to direct benefit transfers based on crop selection, irrigation water-use efficiency or soil moisture availability may help encourage farmers to adopt sustainable practices. At the same time, the improvement of the support of low water-intensive crops, including pulses, oilseeds and millets will increase market confidence and push the process of diversification.

Water governance and aquifers management
Stewardship of ground water should bring ground water near the communities. To increase accountability, and create a culture of communal ownership, local institutions e.g. Village Water Committees could be made stronger, with training, tools and even laws to support the management of the aquifers. Localization of recharge and conservation can be further achieved by integrating the modern hydrology with traditional knowledge.

Climate-Resilient Planning
Climate risks have to be considered in ground water strategies. Unpredictable rain can be cushioned by increasing natural recharge by restoring wetlands, implementing managed aquifer recharge, and installing urban green infrastructure. Concurrently, integrating the issue of groundwater into urban design, disaster prone methodology, and climate change adaptation policies grants sustainable resiliency.

Conclusion

The groundwater crisis in India is not an anticipative issue any more: it is the current and a fast growing problem. Even though the mosaic of policymaking activities exists to enhance recharge, manage the use, and transform agricultural practices, the rate of exploitation is still higher than the rate of natural recovery. Various factors have contributed to the breaking point of aquifers together. What is apparent is that piecemeal solutions will not be applicable or work anymore. In order to have sustainable future, technological solutions are necessary but not sufficient; political or institutional resolve, articulated consistency in institutional performance, and the people in the streets are also compulsory. Incentivized conservation, empowerment of the local communities, and incorporation of groundwater in the larger climate resilience plan are the basics of changing the current trend. The ground water in India is more than a resource it is life support. A collaborative jump into sustainability is needed so that every drop or drop is treasured, not only to be used but to be used in the future generations. This is not a time to wait until tomorrow but to do something comprehensive.