As India’s Groundwater Runs Dry, The Calls For Reform Grow

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.

(Published under Creative Commons from Dialogue Earth. Read the original article here)