Groundwater overuse or overexploitation is defined as a situation in which, over a period of time, average extraction rate from aquifers is greater than the average recharge rate.

Groundwater is a critical resource in India, accounting for over 65% of irrigation water and 85% of drinking water supplies.

However, on current trends it is estimated that 60% of groundwater sources will be in a critical state of degradation within the next twenty years.

According to a report by Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), 55 percent of the wells in India have registered declining trend of ground water level.

Wells in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh have registered highest declining trend of ground water level during 2007-2012.

Causes of groundwater depletion:

• Owing to the decentralised availability of groundwater, it is easily accessible and forms the largest share of India‘s agriculture and drinking water supply
• Poor service delivery from public water supply systems has prompted many farmers, and rural and urban households, to turn to their own private supply for irrigation and for drinking water.
• New pump technologies meant that even farmers and households with very modest incomes could afford to sink and operate their own tube well.
• Government electricity subsidies have shielded farmers from the full cost of pumping, creating a modality of groundwater use that has proved very difficult to change.
• The flexibility and timeliness of groundwater supply presented an attractive alternative to the technically and institutionally less responsive provision of surface water through public systems.
• Currently, the Easement Act, 1882 provides every landowner with the right to collect and dispose, within his own limits, all water under the land and on the surface. 12 This makes it difficult to regulate extraction of ground water.
• Further the law excludes landless ground water users from its purview.
• Decisions such as cropping pattern and cropping intensity are taken independent of the ground water availability in most areas.

 

Government measures:

Draft National Water Framework Bill

• Draft law, prepared by the Water Resources Ministry, is being proposed as a model legislation that can be adopted by states, since water is in the jurisdiction of the state governments.
• Bill also sets a binding national water quality standard and pushes for a national water security plan.

 

Model Bill for the conservation, protection, regulation and management of groundwater:

• The model bill for conservation, protection, regulation and management of groundwater aims to ensure groundwater security and proposes a penalty for its misuse.
• The proposed law wants to introduce a ―graded pricing system‖ for domestic water supply, with full cost recovery pricing for high-income groups, ―affordable pricing for middle-income, and a ―certain quantum of free supply‖ to the poor.
• It also has provisions to charge a fee for industrial and bulk use of groundwater.

 

National Groundwater Management Improvement Program(NGIMP):

• The proposed National Groundwater Management Improvement Program (NGMIP) aims to build on current national and state efforts targeted at the long term goal of reducing groundwater level decline.
• Its objective is to ―improve the management of groundwater resources in selected states.