Groundwater

Tamil Nadu’s initiative to enhance water policy and management: Updates expected by January

A United Nations University report released this week finds that drastic changes are approaching if risks to our fundamental socioecological systems are not addressed.

India is the second-largest cereal exporter globally, making its cereal production vital for both domestic and international food security. Three major states in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal - account for 30% of India's total food production and are considered the food bowl of India.

Field visits are an exciting enterprise, especially as a young student who wishes to understand rural India. But they are also a complicated process of seeing and discerning, trying to figure out what is real and what is not. Hagiographies of local mobilisation are common in such endeavours, which, in some cases, are justified. To give into such tendencies is to pick the easy way out.

Villagers in Rajasthan restore grasslands to save the endangered Great Indian bustard

Irrigated agriculture consumes the largest share of freshwater resources, including both surface water and groundwater. As high as 40 percent of irrigation is dependent on groundwater, accounting for 70 percent of the total groundwater extractions world over and this share is predicted to increase with climate change. 

Rural job demand under MGNREGA rises as monsoon plays truant

Chennai's reservoirs became empty in the summer of 2019, prompting the government to truck in 10 million litres of water per day.

As I embarked on my agtech and water tour in India, I was surprised to experience such a diverse range of extreme climate in just one month. I traveled from drought-stricken landscapes in North India (early June 2023) to flood-ravaged regions while leaving the country (early July 2023) and encountered uneven weather patterns in between.

Marathwada is one of the most drought-prone regions of India and the increasing severity of droughts and their adverse impacts on socioeconomic conditions in the region have been of major concern in recent years. Majority of the area of Marathwada is under rain-fed agriculture and the summer monsoon rainfall is crucial for agricultural production in the region.