about a shift from community-governed systems of shared sources and resources to
individual, access-driven competition around such resources, especially aquifers.
India’s annual groundwater extraction is estimated to have increased ten times
since India became independent (estimated from Shah 2005). India’s groundwater
trajectory, as a consequence of the almost invisible transition from a dominantly
surface water dependency in agriculture to an unprecedented dependency on
groundwater for agriculture and domestic water supplies, both in rural and urban
settings, has led to a set of serious consequences, the main ones being:
1. The shift, during the last century, from a community resource to a fragmented
resource accessed by millions. The division of the resource (aquifers) through
such millions of sources (especially wells) has come into conflict with the
fundamental principles of managing aquifers as a common pool resource.
2. The competition between various users and types of use has led to critical levels
of groundwater depletion that is often coterminous with serious issues of
groundwater contamination.
3. Nearly, the entire drinking water supply in rural India is met from groundwater.
While the average annual demand for drinking water in a typical India village is
negligibly small when compared to the demand for irrigation, the competition
between these two demands has surely seen only one winner—irrigation.
Drinking water security is seriously endangered in very many villages of India.
4. Groundwater is largely invisible and requires an understanding that is based on
carefully collected, analysed and interpreted data. While available data on
groundwater in India is sufficient to be indicative of a variety of problems, the
data is not representative enough to stimulate robust decision-making at
appropriate scales.
5. Lastly, conservation and recharge efforts are becoming increasingly popular across
India; while many such efforts are genuine, their overall benefits to the management
and governance of groundwater remains limited, especially with regard to the free
riding (of such benefits) through unsustainable groundwater usage.
A variety of responses have emerged in developing examples and demonstration
of sustainable groundwater management in India. The Hivre Bazar experiment from
Maharashtra has been a torch-bearer of combining supply- and demand-side
reforms through decentralized institutions of governance (Gram Panchayat) in a
drought-prone, hard-rock aquifer system in India (Singh 2012). Apart from this
experience, whether it is the scaled approach of using a hydrological water balance
to develop crop-water budgets under the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Managed
Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS) (Das and Burke 2013) or the intensively
engaging programme of developing a social protocol integrating hydrogeology and
people’s participation under the Participatory Groundwater Management
Programme (PGWM) in a variety of locations across five or six different states,
there are certain common features that have emerged through such efforts (Ghose
et al. 2018). These features, among many nuanced aspects of hydrological and
socio-economic importance, broadly include the following:
Catalysing Groundwater Governance Through People’s …
9
individual, access-driven competition around such resources, especially aquifers.
India’s annual groundwater extraction is estimated to have increased ten times
since India became independent (estimated from Shah 2005). India’s groundwater
trajectory, as a consequence of the almost invisible transition from a dominantly
surface water dependency in agriculture to an unprecedented dependency on
groundwater for agriculture and domestic water supplies, both in rural and urban
settings, has led to a set of serious consequences, the main ones being:
1. The shift, during the last century, from a community resource to a fragmented
resource accessed by millions. The division of the resource (aquifers) through
such millions of sources (especially wells) has come into conflict with the
fundamental principles of managing aquifers as a common pool resource.
2. The competition between various users and types of use has led to critical levels
of groundwater depletion that is often coterminous with serious issues of
groundwater contamination.
3. Nearly, the entire drinking water supply in rural India is met from groundwater.
While the average annual demand for drinking water in a typical India village is
negligibly small when compared to the demand for irrigation, the competition
between these two demands has surely seen only one winner—irrigation.
Drinking water security is seriously endangered in very many villages of India.
4. Groundwater is largely invisible and requires an understanding that is based on
carefully collected, analysed and interpreted data. While available data on
groundwater in India is sufficient to be indicative of a variety of problems, the
data is not representative enough to stimulate robust decision-making at
appropriate scales.
5. Lastly, conservation and recharge efforts are becoming increasingly popular across
India; while many such efforts are genuine, their overall benefits to the management
and governance of groundwater remains limited, especially with regard to the free
riding (of such benefits) through unsustainable groundwater usage.
A variety of responses have emerged in developing examples and demonstration
of sustainable groundwater management in India. The Hivre Bazar experiment from
Maharashtra has been a torch-bearer of combining supply- and demand-side
reforms through decentralized institutions of governance (Gram Panchayat) in a
drought-prone, hard-rock aquifer system in India (Singh 2012). Apart from this
experience, whether it is the scaled approach of using a hydrological water balance
to develop crop-water budgets under the Andhra Pradesh Farmers Managed
Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS) (Das and Burke 2013) or the intensively
engaging programme of developing a social protocol integrating hydrogeology and
people’s participation under the Participatory Groundwater Management
Programme (PGWM) in a variety of locations across five or six different states,
there are certain common features that have emerged through such efforts (Ghose
et al. 2018). These features, among many nuanced aspects of hydrological and
socio-economic importance, broadly include the following:
Catalysing Groundwater Governance Through People’s …
9