March 17, 2022

The agricultural practices depleting India’s groundwater

topic:	Sustainable Agriculture
located:	India
editor:	Tish Sanghera

Editor’s Note: This article is part of our groundwater campaign, in observance of the UN Water Day. Find more groundwater-related articles here. 

In the late 1960s, a ‘green revolution’ took over Indian agriculture, introducing new, higher-yielding varieties of wheat, rice and sugarcane, which helped to end food shortages and feed a hungry, rapidly expanding population.

But this green revolution has not been very green in the long run. The new varieties were more thirsty than their predecessors, leading farmers to drill tube wells deep into the ground to extract enough water to satisfy them. Farmers were also encouraged to plant multiple crops throughout the year, even in the drier months, which required drawing up more and more water from belowground aquifers. As decades passed, these aquifers have slowly depleted.

Around 90 percent of India’s groundwater is used for agriculture. In the traditional breadbasket states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, the unsustainable use of water resources means the rate of groundwater extraction is more than 100 percent, according to a 2022 government report. Indeed, in some areas, so much water is being extracted that the ground above empty aquifers is sinking.

Fixing Indian agriculture’s exploitative dependence on groundwater will be key to protect against potential food insecurity and the loss of livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people. As the climate crisis brings soaring temperatures and disrupts the critical monsoon rains (important for recharging underground aquifers), farming is becoming increasingly difficult. Crop failures can drive farmers to bankruptcy and despair. In 2019, 10,281 farmers committed suicide - roughly 28 persons per day, according to National Crime Records Bureau data.

Many experts have long advocated for India to address this toxic relationship between farming and groundwater. For example, one suggested solution is crop rotation. It currently does not make sense to have rice farming in the dry northern states, where farmers must extract groundwater to flood the fields and create a ‘paddy’. Instead, rice should be grown in the wetter, southern parts of the country and ideally following the monsoon, when water supplies are at their peak. Less water-intensive crops, like pulses and legumes, can be grown in the drier months.

In Bundelkhand for instance, a district in Uttar Pradesh infamous for its frequent droughts, rice still makes up a substantial portion of the crops grown in the area. This is also in part due to illogical government subsidies, which offer a relatively high compensations for water-guzzling crops like rice, wheat and sugarcane.

Sustainable farming approaches that focus on water conservation are growing in popularity in India. Farmers have been encouraged to dig ‘farm ponds’ to catch rainfall throughout the year which can be used to water crops and replenish below-ground aquifers. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, a state government scheme offers 50 percent of its funds to support their construction. Constructing large ponds, tanks and wells were a traditional water conservation method in India for centuries, but in recent years, they have been covered and constructed over as the need for space has increased.

Owing to efforts by people like ‘India’s Water Man’, Rajendra Singh, the winner of the Stockholm Water Prize, awareness of how limited and precious India’s water resources is growing. Decades of unsustainable practices must be unlearnt to ensure that future generations have access to adequate and clean water. The race is now on to see whether enough progress can be made before critical supplies are exhausted.

Photo by Ryo Yoshitake

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