Now that the government has finally accepted that India is facing the El Nino factor, with a 60 per cent deficiency in the crucial southwest monsoon, the question uppermost in the mind of the average Indian is how it will impact his water needs.

There is no doubt that the farming community is going to be hit hard. The government has launched a ‘pre-emptive agricultural defence plan’ across 315 vulnerable districts. Such a contingency plan will divide these districts into strict priority zones based on their lack of irrigation access. A strategy like this sounds excellent on paper, but if one cuts all the clutter, what it will amount to is falling back on our dwindling groundwater resources to tackle this crisis.

India has emerged as the largest user of ground water in the world. Our extraction rates exceed the combined extraction rates of China and the United States. Ground water is meeting over 65 per cent of our agricultural needs and 85 per cent of our rural drinking water demands. This over-reliance has led to a severe aquifer depletion, with a net loss of about 450 cubic km recorded in North India between 2002 and 2021.

There is a double bind in this wholesale extraction.

The more ground water we extract, the lower our water levels drop. The main failure of the Jal Jeevan Mission, tasked with supplying piped water to rural India, is that while the infrastructure of taps has been put up in place in 70 per cent of our villages, the majority of them do not have access to even tube-well water during these scorching summer........

© Free Press Journal