PS Vijay Shankar

It warns that groundwater quantity as well as quality are the two major problems that the country has been facing.

The rate of withdrawal of groundwater has reached “unsafe” levels in 31% of the districts, covering 33% of the land area and 35% of the population. The situation has dramatically worsened within a short span of nine years, between the assessments done in 1995 and 2004.

Taking the quantitative and qualitative aspects together, data indicates that a total of 347 districts (59% of all districts in India) are vulnerable in terms of safe drinking water in India. This is a matter of serious concern, requiring a new approach.

A workshop on groundwater was organised by ACWADAM and Arghyam Trust in Pune in May 2009, that brought together several experts in the field, and explored diverse topics such as the importance of scale in groundwater resource planning and management, importance of aquifer typologies, participatory processes of groundwater management, groundwater regulation and groundwater linkages with watershed development, markets and policy matters.

The attempt of the workshop and research papers presented, was to highlight contemporary issues in groundwater management, and to look at it through the multiple lenses of hydrogeology, sociology, economics, livelihoods, environment, disasters and so on.

This paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly dwells on the groundwater management debate and makes suggestions for developing a viable approach to sustainable and equitable management of groundwater in India.