1 Introduction
India’s new government recently merged the two most important ministries—the
Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and the Ministry of Water Resources—
dealing with water and constituted the Ministry of Jal Shakti. It is an interesting
move, keeping in mind the constantly shifting dependencies in the water sector and
the recent spate of droughts that many regions of India have experienced. Nearly,
1 billion Indians use groundwater every day, whether in agriculture, for drinking
water supplies or in the context of urban and industrial water supplies (based on
recent data, mainly Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2018; Ministry of
Agriculture 2014; NIUA 2011). Groundwater, in particular, has received much
attention, both in practice, through the focus on water conservation and recharge
programmes, and in public policy, through the national aquifer mapping programme and through the more recent policy reform suggested for India’s two large
institutions—the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board
(Jain 2017; Committee on restructuring the CWC and CGWB 2016). Moreover, the
focus of managing groundwater has also figured strongly in a report on the strategic
management of the programme called Prime Minister’s Krishi Sichayee Yojana—
PMKSY—and the work on solar power for improved management of groundwater
resources from different parts of India (Shah et al. 2016; Bassi 2018).
The crisis surrounding groundwater is already hitting India hard. And it is here to
stay! India became the largest extractor of groundwater in the world in the 1980s
(Shah 2009). The fact, of course, became evident only after data on groundwater
over-extraction emerged in the late 1990s and towards the beginning of the
twenty-first century. India’s groundwater extraction continued to grow through the
1980s and is still in the acceleration mode. The trend and pattern of India’s
groundwater extraction presents a temporal and spatial paradox. Growing dependencies in agriculture, from as less as 30% at the time of India’s independence to as
much as 70% after the turn of the century (Vijay Shankar et al. 2011; Ministry of
Agriculture 2013), has meant that agricultural demand for groundwater is competing with groundwater sources that provide 98% of India’s rural drinking water
supplies (Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2018). India’s towns and cities
are not behind in their access to groundwater supplies. More than half of India’s
urban water supply comes from groundwater through formal and informal systems
(Narain and Pandey 2012), while sample studies across industries show that 55% of
industrial water use is based on groundwater, either as a stand-alone source or as a
source that supplements surface water supplies (Perveen et al. 2012).
Such large-scale, unprecedented dependency on groundwater created a crisis
surrounding groundwater resources. With the largest groundwater-depleted region
of the world—the Indo-Gangetic Plains—reported through a variety of publications
(Macdonald et al. 2016; Mukherjee et al. 2015), the groundwater revolution in India
has been scripted by millions of farmers and ordinary citizens, essentially to bridge
the gap between public water supply and the rapidly growing demand. This gap was
filled by groundwater resources tapped largely through individual investments and
2
H. Kulkarni et al.
India’s new government recently merged the two most important ministries—the
Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and the Ministry of Water Resources—
dealing with water and constituted the Ministry of Jal Shakti. It is an interesting
move, keeping in mind the constantly shifting dependencies in the water sector and
the recent spate of droughts that many regions of India have experienced. Nearly,
1 billion Indians use groundwater every day, whether in agriculture, for drinking
water supplies or in the context of urban and industrial water supplies (based on
recent data, mainly Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2018; Ministry of
Agriculture 2014; NIUA 2011). Groundwater, in particular, has received much
attention, both in practice, through the focus on water conservation and recharge
programmes, and in public policy, through the national aquifer mapping programme and through the more recent policy reform suggested for India’s two large
institutions—the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board
(Jain 2017; Committee on restructuring the CWC and CGWB 2016). Moreover, the
focus of managing groundwater has also figured strongly in a report on the strategic
management of the programme called Prime Minister’s Krishi Sichayee Yojana—
PMKSY—and the work on solar power for improved management of groundwater
resources from different parts of India (Shah et al. 2016; Bassi 2018).
The crisis surrounding groundwater is already hitting India hard. And it is here to
stay! India became the largest extractor of groundwater in the world in the 1980s
(Shah 2009). The fact, of course, became evident only after data on groundwater
over-extraction emerged in the late 1990s and towards the beginning of the
twenty-first century. India’s groundwater extraction continued to grow through the
1980s and is still in the acceleration mode. The trend and pattern of India’s
groundwater extraction presents a temporal and spatial paradox. Growing dependencies in agriculture, from as less as 30% at the time of India’s independence to as
much as 70% after the turn of the century (Vijay Shankar et al. 2011; Ministry of
Agriculture 2013), has meant that agricultural demand for groundwater is competing with groundwater sources that provide 98% of India’s rural drinking water
supplies (Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2018). India’s towns and cities
are not behind in their access to groundwater supplies. More than half of India’s
urban water supply comes from groundwater through formal and informal systems
(Narain and Pandey 2012), while sample studies across industries show that 55% of
industrial water use is based on groundwater, either as a stand-alone source or as a
source that supplements surface water supplies (Perveen et al. 2012).
Such large-scale, unprecedented dependency on groundwater created a crisis
surrounding groundwater resources. With the largest groundwater-depleted region
of the world—the Indo-Gangetic Plains—reported through a variety of publications
(Macdonald et al. 2016; Mukherjee et al. 2015), the groundwater revolution in India
has been scripted by millions of farmers and ordinary citizens, essentially to bridge
the gap between public water supply and the rapidly growing demand. This gap was
filled by groundwater resources tapped largely through individual investments and
2
H. Kulkarni et al.