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As India’s Groundwater Runs Dry, Calls for Reform Grow

Gayathri D. Naik

Last month, the southern Indian city of Bengaluru faced an early start to the monsoon and experienced its wettest May ever. Beneath the heavy rains and floods, water shortages may seem a far cry. Yet they are a common problem. Just last year, a weak monsoon the year before led to dry conditions that created a water shortage for about 4 million inhabitants, mostly on the outskirts, who rely on groundwater extracted via borewells. This led to snaking queues of residents buying water from tankers.

Such scenes reflect a wider issue across the country, with water scarcity deepening and population needs rising. Tensions are mounting – both within urban areas and in broader interstate disputes.

In response to depleting surface water resources, Bengaluru and many other regions are increasingly turning to aquifers to quench their thirst and meet their daily needs. This race to extract groundwater is intensifying the crisis. Calls for an urgent rethink of water governance models are intensifying too – particularly regarding groundwater management and regulation, which has long been overlooked in policy debates.

Reliance on and overexploitation of groundwater

Groundwater accounts for more than 60% of India’s irrigation and over 80% of rural drinking water needs. The country uses more groundwater than any other. In rural areas, it is the primary source of drinking and domestic water, and also helps to meet many urban demands. Northern states like Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are particularly hard hit by widespread groundwater extraction, with a large proportion of their populations involved in agriculture.

According to a 2024 government report by the Central Groundwater Board, India is using up groundwater faster than it can be naturally refilled. On average, the country extracts just over 60% of the water available underground. Out of nearly 7,000 areas they studied, 11% are considered “over-exploited” – where people are taking out more water than nature can replace. Another 3% are in a critical situation, using nearly all the available groundwater, while 11% are at risk (“semi-critical”), and 73% are still considered safe, with an extraction rate of under 70%.

This crisis is being driven by a growing population, the intensification of farming, rapid industrialisation and unsustainable urbanisation. The main drivers are agriculture, industrial water demands and drinking water needs.

Government subsidies for power, credit and market access – first introduced during the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s to boost agricultural productivity and address poverty and food security – have also had unintended consequences. While these measures helped ensure enough food for the country, they also encouraged over-extraction of groundwater, undermining water availability and environmental sustainability, according to my research.

India’s discriminatory groundwater laws

The groundwater regulatory framework in India adds to the challenges of managing its groundwater development. The framework is rooted in an outdated “land-water nexus”, a concept developed during Britain’s industrial era and later adopted in Indian law through colonial-era court rulings. Under this system, enshrined in the Indian Easements Act 1882, groundwater is treated as an extension of land, giving landowners the right to use such water that is beneath their property.

This framework fails to reflect India’s social, economic, environmental and climate realities. By linking groundwater rights to land and property ownership, it has reinforced historical inequalities in land distribution, which disproportionately benefit upper-caste, male landowners. Meanwhile, many lower-caste communities and women, who make up a significant part of India’s agricultural workforce, have far less access to land – and therefore to the groundwater it holds.

This system perpetuates social and economic injustices and violates constitutional principles of equality, distributive justice and the fundamental right to water, recognised by India’s courts.

The state has tried to address these problems through laws and regulations, including the Model Groundwater Bills of 1992 and 2005. But these statutes largely preserve the old land-based framework. They take a “curative” approach, only stepping in to regulate areas already in crisis, rather than proactively protecting groundwater resources.

Challenges and steps ahead

Current groundwater laws in most Indian states follow a uniform pattern that does not consider important local factors, such as variations in aquifers, climate patterns, rainfall distribution and the social and economic realities of each region. Existing laws do not address the diverse groundwater situations in different parts of the country, particularly in eastern and southern states where there is less groundwater development and exploration than the agricultural belts of the northern states. They also fail to address the continued challenges arising from climate change, such as higher aquifer depletion rates during droughts and dry conditions caused by weak monsoon rains.

Environmental concerns – particularly groundwater recharge, water-source sustainability and ecosystem water needs – receive inadequate attention in these bills. As courts and policymakers increasingly discuss the rights of nature, it is crucial to include environmental protection and ecosystem water needs in groundwater regulation.

This legal framework must be reconceptualised, especially in the light of growing impacts of climate change. We need to move towards greater state control over groundwater access and allocation, reducing the dominance of private ownership and control. Groundwater should be regulated as a “public trust” resource, meaning it belongs to the public, is for their use, and the government has ultimate responsibility for looking after it. Additionally, there should be greater emphasis on subsidiarity – giving local authorities primary control of such resources – along with decentralisation and public participation in groundwater management, as suggested by the Groundwater Model Bill 2016. These could help create more responsive and equitable groundwater management. Such a bottom-up approach would allow local water users to have more say in day-to-day water decisions.

Equity and inclusiveness in water management are essential. Enabling broad participation in “water-user associations” – farmer organisations responsible for managing and distributing water resources – alongside eliminating caste- and gender-based discrimination, will support fairer and more informed decision-making. The voices and choices of women, who often assume the role of water collectors and make up a significant part of the agricultural workforce, must be recognised and encouraged.

There also needs to be a paradigm shift from supply sustainability – focusing solely on getting enough water for immediate use – to source sustainability, or protecting the natural water sources themselves. This means treating aquifers, rivers and ecosystems as living systems that need to be conserved and restored, especially in the context of climate change. Many participants of water conservation initiatives have noted that current efforts often only aim to meet short-term irrigation needs and lack a long-term vision for sustainable water management. India’s policies for addressing summer water crises also reflect this short-term mindset, and they do not go far enough to deal with the challenges posed by climate change.

Our water laws, policies and conservation efforts must focus on equity and inclusiveness to achieve water justice for all users. At the same time, they should also foreground the needs and rights of water resources themselves, ensuring their protection and sustainability for future generations.

(Gayathri D. Naik is an assistant professor and co-director of Commons Cell in the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. She teaches and researches on water, environmental and property law. Courtesy: Dialogue Earth, an independent non-profit dedicated to producing exceptional environmental journalism and informed conversations on urgent climate and sustainability topics.)

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Scientists Raise Alarm as Rural Water Supply Goes from Depths to Debt

Arathi Menon

The city of Bengaluru and its surrounding peri-urban areas have been grappling with severe groundwater depletion, driven primarily by over-extraction. Yet, even as water sources are running dry, administrative focus remains largely on technical and financial fixes — laying pipelines, ensuring capital investment — rather than on effective water resource management. This has led to the near-complete neglect of efforts to sustainably manage water sources.

A new research paper turns attention to these on-the-ground realities, raising critical questions: What is the actual extent of groundwater depletion and how is it impacting rural water supply systems? What are the primary drivers of this depletion? And what are the additional financial burdens involved in finding new sources for water supply?

The researchers analysed long-term data from two gram panchayats, Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru, in the upper Arkavathy watershed near Bengaluru. Their findings confirm that groundwater depletion in this hard rock aquifer region is a severe and growing concern, driven largely by agricultural water abstraction. Notably, the study addresses a common misconception, highlighting that domestic use accounts for just 10% of freshwater consumption, while agriculture uses around 70%, and industrial and commercial uses account for about 20%.

While the researchers suggest that shifting to more water-efficient crops could help address over-extraction, the deeper issue lies in how water resources are managed, says Lakshmikantha N.R., a Ph.D. student at Bengaluru-based research organisation ATREE and part of a research and innovation centre, WELL Labs. “In these regions, over 85% of drinking water comes from groundwater. But most drinking water programmes — like many WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) initiatives — focus on infrastructure and finance. Since our domestic water supply depends so heavily on groundwater, we should pay more attention to how the source itself is functioning,” he says.

This study aims to fill that gap, particularly in the context of the government’s Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), an initiative to provide piped drinking water to every Indian household by 2024.

Drilling deeper is no solution

In hard rock terrains, drilling deeper borewells does not necessarily yield more water. “The most accessible water is available at shallower depths. It’s the same water that oozes through fractures and fissures lower down,” Lakshmikantha explains. “About 80% of the water being extracted is actually replenished water. Earlier, open wells tapped the upper 80-100 feet, which are more porous and yield more water. Now, due to competition, the same volume of water is being extracted from depths of 800 or 1000 feet.” He adds, “It’s like moving your bucket deeper just to get the same water — and to keep it away from your neighbour. But the deeper you go, the more you pay for electricity. And because electricity is subsidised, the farmer doesn’t feel the true cost.”

Rural water supply systems are being forced to constantly adapt to the falling water table. As old wells run dry, gram panchayats must abandon them and drill deeper, more expensive borewells. As borewells are drilled deeper, the power required to pump water increases significantly. With electricity often provided free to farmers, local administrative units bear the financial burden of this over-extraction, pushing them to severe “electricity debts”. These critical linkages between groundwater depth, pumping costs, and public expenditure are largely absent from mainstream discussions on water supply and management.

T.V. Ramachandra, a scientist at the Centre for Ecological Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, says the study explores causal factors of acute water shortage India has been facing, including limited freshwater resources, rising demand, and over-extraction of groundwater. “The study provides valuable insights into sustaining water through groundwater recharge and also implications of irrational decisions to provide free electricity, etc,” he says.

He points to a study on watershed management in the four river basins in the Western Ghats spanning 36 months which revealed that watershed management played a crucial role in sustaining water, evident from water availability throughout a year in the watershed dominated by native vegetation compared to degraded watersheds with vegetation cover less than 30%, having water for four to six months. “Moreover, native vegetation watersheds facilitate groundwater recharge evident from the infiltration of 60 to 65% of precipitation, which aids in ensuring water availability during the post-monsoon period. This emphasises the need to maintain porous landscapes (with vegetation cover and surface waterbodies) to ensure groundwater recharge,” he adds.

Save our sources

However, current rural drinking water programmes focus primarily on asset creation, rather than on aquifer management or regulating water demand in agriculture. The authors argue that India’s rural water policy must move beyond short-term replacement financing to adopt a more integrated aquifer governance model. This includes metering agricultural pumps, incentivising groundwater recharge, and aligning drinking water entitlements with sustainable yields. Without such reforms, public drinking water schemes risk remaining locked in an expensive cycle of deeper drilling and rising debt.

“When someone over-extracts — taking more water than is annually replenished — they should be discouraged,” says Lakshmikantha. “But many government schemes such as Sujala focus only on recharge. The logic is: you’re extracting too much, so we’ll just try to recharge more so you can continue your behaviour. That’s problematic.”

He adds that recharge programmes also raise issues of equity. “They mainly benefit borewell-owning farmers. Rainfed farmers who don’t have borewells don’t benefit directly.”

“If the government calculates these electricity costs and uses the savings to pay farmers who limit their borewell depth, say, to less than 500 feet, it could encourage more sustainable practices. Farmers would help restore the water table, and the government would save on power subsidies,” he suggests as a remedy. Researchers also suggest incentivising ecological farming practices and ecosystem services to encourage farmers to limit borewell depth. Policies could also establish clear extraction limits: “You can’t drill deeper than a certain level.”

(Aditi Tandon is the Senior Production Editor at Mongabay India. Courtesy: Mongabay, a nonprofit environmental science and conservation news platform.)