Groundwater Recharge

India's groundwater is depleting very fast posing a threat to the freshwater resources and food security in the region. North India, a food basket for more than a billion people, has been experiencing rapid groundwater depletion leading to reduction in cropped area and the production of wheat and rice.

May 2024 has shattered many global temperature records on land and in the oceans. It was no different, as parts of India recorded some of its harshest temperatures.

In recent years, there has been a notable trend towards overdependence on groundwater for irrigation in the Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka and the Annamayya district of Andhra Pradesh. The transformation in the region has been marked by a growing number of cases where farmers are drilling borewells as a response to the declining water table over the years.

As Amol Singh Yadav, a folk artist hailing from Dasania village in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, stood up to sing his song about the Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABY), one could imagine how ambitious and potentially transformative the ABY scheme is for the management of groundwater at the community level.

As high as  600 million Indians suffer from high to very high water stress because of insufficient availability of freshwater.

Scientists from IISc unveil a Public Information System to map unplanned urbanisation in Bengaluru  

Can traditional tanks help Bengaluru in reviving its groundwater levels and in preventing the growing water crisis that the city is currently facing?

Traditional tanks in South India

Citizens from coastal towns of Moodbidri and Karkala in Karnataka have joined hands to revive their water bodies

Groundwater, comprising approximately 99 percent of easily accessible freshwater (United Nations 2022), plays a vital role in meeting the water needs of diverse stakeholders globally, encompassing both rural and urban areas and spanning industrial and irrigation sectors.

It is rightly said that "what is measured is managed better". And we observed this happen at Sagapali village in Keonjhar district of Odisha. This village is in the Nayakote gram panchayat, and has an undulating terrain surrounded by five hillocks. It has forests around it with limited plainlands for cultivation.