Context: As per a recent study, the cropping intensity or the amount of land planted in the winter season may decrease by up to 20% by 2025, due to severe groundwater depletion.
Key highlights

• 13% of the villages in which farmers plant a winter crop are located in critically water-depleted regions.
• These villages may lose 68% of their cropped area in future if access to all groundwater irrigation is lost.
• These losses will largely occur in northwest and central India.

Key Facts

• India is the second-largest producer of wheat in the world, with over 30 million hectares in the country dedicated to producing this crop.
• The important winter crops are wheat, barley, mustard and peas.
• India’s three main irrigation types on winter cropped areas: dug wells, tube wells, canals.
• Punjab and Haryana are ecologically less suitable for rice cultivation due to predominantly light soils.
• Intensive agriculture after Green revolution led to unsustainable groundwater use for irrigation and in turn groundwater scarcity.

Challenges

• Perpetual and unlimited groundwater extraction permissions are granted across the board to certain categories without adequate impact assessment and effective checks.
• Growing water-intensive crops in water stressed/scarce regions in the country by indiscriminately lifting groundwater.
• Power is highly subsidized to the agriculture sector, thus, encouraging indiscriminate lifting of groundwater for agriculture.
• Industries are granted exemptions irrespective of the potential long-term negative impact, even in water-stressed areas.
• Water tariff often does not reflect the economic value of water.
• Absence of real-time monitoring mechanism which can ensure the rate of withdrawal is less than the rate of replenishment.

Suggestions

• Develop guidelines and specifications for robust real-time groundwater withdrawal monitoring instruments.
• Develop a central database and dashboard integrating both industrial unit level ground water withdrawal data and status of ground water level at least in critical and over-exploited areas.
• Establish national level guidelines to promote reuse of treated wastewater, and develop/revise state level regulations in alignment with the same.
• Operationalize state-level regulations on reuse of treated wastewater by conceptualising and implementing specific reuse and recycle projects.
• Adoption of water-saving technologies like a sprinkler, drip irrigation and switching to less water-intensive crops.