As India's groundwater evaporates, farmers scramble for solutions

About six years ago, Kuldeep Singh had a 300-feet-deep borewell drilled on his six-acre farmland in the Zira block of Ferozepur district in India's northwestern state of Punjab. Although the borewell had cost him ₹2,60,000 (USD 3,200), Singh was hopeful that it would be able to draw water from at least 150-feet beneath the ground. 

To his dismay, the borewell is hardly hitting water at 280-feet deep.

"Earlier, the borewells used to pump out fresh water with such a force that would irrigate the entire farmland within 10 days," Singh, who has been a farmer for over 10 years, told FairPlanet. "Now, it takes almost a month to irrigate the land."

Singh is among millions of farmers who are facing the brunt of increasing groundwater depletion in India. 

A 2023 report published by UN Water cautions that India is close to reaching its groundwater plummeting tipping point. The northern parts of the country, it appears, are the worst hit, losing 95 per cent of groundwater between 2002 and 2022, according to a study published in One Earth journal. 

The study states that even significant rainfall in the future may not be sufficient to recover this scale of depletion. 

"Given the situation, I think I will have to install another borewell and a bigger motor," Singh said. "But I [neither] have the money for that nor am I certain that it will materialise in better yield," he said drily. 

India is the world’s largest user of groundwater, which is an essential freshwater resource supplying drinking water to over a billion people. The country witnessed a boom in groundwater irrigation in the 1960s with the launch of the green revolution. Today, over 60 per cent of India’s total irrigation is groundwater-fed. 

But India is hardly the only country grappling with alarming rates of groundwater depletion, which is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. An investigation into nearly 1,700 aquifers in over 40 countries found that groundwater levels in almost half of them have fallen since 2000. The study, published in the journal Nature, analyses satellite monitoring of continuous declines in groundwater, from California’s Central Valley to India's northern regions. 

A severe Threat to the Breadbasket 

Experts point to the surging demand for freshwater for drinking and irrigation as the main cause behind the significant decline in groundwater levels over the last twenty years. Although monsoon rains contribute to groundwater recharge – with water seeping through the soil and accumulating in spaces between rocks and layers of porous rock known as aquifers – the extraction of stored water reduces the water table. Unlike rivers or lakes, studies indicate that replenishing groundwater reserves can span years.

Ideally, groundwater should be available at a depth of 50 to 60 ft. But in Punjab, whose name means five rivers and which is considered to be India’s breadbasket, the water level has significantly dropped to 150 - 200 ft in most districts.

A 2020 block-wise groundwater resources assessment by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) warned that if the present depletion rates persist, Punjab’s groundwater is expected to drop below 300 metres by 2039. This would result in the over-exploitation of aquifers, instigating not just a water scarcity crisis but also rendering the water highly contaminated and unsuitable for both irrigation and domestic use.

The situation is also grim in neighbouring states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which, along with Punjab, constitute food-growing regions of the country. 

According to the UN report, 78 per cent of wells in Punjab are considered over-exploited, and the entire north-western region in India is predicted to experience critically low groundwater availability by 2025.

Kahan Singh Pannu, a former Secretary at Punjab's Agricultural Board, believes that the government and its agriculture policies have largely led to the rapid depletion of local groundwater.

"One of the biggest reasons why farmers have to extract water in such quantities is our country's over-reliance on water-intensive crops like paddy and sugarcane," Pannu told FairPlanet. India is the second-largest global producer of staple cereal grains like paddy and wheat, he added, "but paddy is not Punjab’s traditional crop and is considered unconducive to the agro climatic character of the state."

It requires around 4,118 litres to grow one kilogram of rice in Punjab, compared to 2,169 litres in West Bengal, a natural habitat for the crop, data by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices shows. 

Kuldeep Singh, who mostly grows paddy, wheat and seasonal vegetables on his 6-acre-land, said he has no choice but to cultivate the crop. "I am not even able to recover the cost of growing alternate crops like maize, cotton and millets," Singh lamented. "Because the minimum support price provided [by the government] on these crops is very low."

Solution in Sight?

In response to the growing water crisis and the excessive use of fertilisers that have led to deteriorating soil quality, both the Union and State governments have been advocating for crop diversification as a strategic measure over the past few years.

The programme, however, has seen a little success so far. 

Even after spending ₹274 crore (roughly USD 40 million) on the crop diversification programme (CDP) between 2014 and 2019, the sown area of rice has increased by 7.18 per cent in Punjab at the cost of other crops, found an audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. 

"India's obsession with paddy cultivation is because it wants to maintain food security," Pannu said. "But if it doesn't shift the rice growing areas from Punjab and Haryana and promote crop diversification by ensuring equivalent income for farmers from cultivating other crops, then the impending water crisis would result in a food crisis, too," he warned. 

The most plausible solution to avert this crisis, Devinder Sharma, suggests is remodelling British era canal and dam-based irrigation techniques.

"Providing irrigation facilities through canal-based water decreases farmers’ over-reliance on borewells and tubewells," Sharma, a prominent food and trade policy analyst based in India, told FairPlanet. 

In March 2022, canal water accounted for 21 per cent of Punjab's irrigation, while the remaining 79 per cent relied on groundwater extraction, according to data shared by Punjab's Water Resources Minister.

"My village is yet to receive the canal-based water," Singh said. "So I am bound to rely on the borewell, which doesn't even provide quality water now."

Ranjeet Singh Uldan, a farmer in the Bundelkhand district of Uttar Pradesh, struggles to keep his 17-acre-land irrigated. Bundelkhand is one of India's drought-prone regions, and agriculture there is largely dependent on monsoons, which seasonally recharge the groundwater. 

However, with increasing temperatures and erratic rainfall, Uldan said, "it’s difficult to get water at 3 metres - even if we use bigger motor pumps."

"The only alternative is access to dam water, which nobody in my area has," added Uldan, who only grows vegetables on his farmland and fears that the ongoing dense fog could ruin this year's produce. 

"This can be resolved only through a robust canal irrigation system," said Sharma. 

"Whether it is dense fog or inaccessibility to water, anything can ruin a farmer's year-long produce. In most cases, they are not even compensated," he concluded. "It is high time that the government starts working towards making agriculture a lucrative profession."

Image by Deepak Kumar.