Water wealth: Groundwater exploitation in Punjab disincentivises small farmers

Why in news?

The Hindu editorial flags how Punjab’s 152% groundwater extraction is widening wealth gaps among farmers.

UPSC Relevance

Prelims

Mains

• GS-I: Distribution of key natural resources (water).
• GS-III: Cropping patterns, irrigation systems, direct and indirect farm subsidies, MSP; conservation and environmental degradation.

2025-26 Dynamic Groundwater Assessment

• The dynamic groundwater assessment in India is conducted jointly by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and the State/UT Ground Water Departments and the report is released under the authority of the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
• As per the 2025-26 Dynamic Groundwater Assessment.
  • National SoE (Stage of Groundwater Extraction) is 60.63% which is safe , but 730 of 6,762 units (10.8%) are over-exploited, mostly in the North-West, West and South.
  • Punjab is the worst case: it draws 26.32 BCM against 17.29 BCM extractable, an SoE of 152%. So Punjab uses about 52% more than it can sustainably withdraw.
    • Irrigation uses 24.95 BCM of this.
• Farm practices drive the crisis: water-hungry crops, free power, MSP bias, flood irrigation and a tube well race.
• Degradation is about quality too: nitrate, fluoride, arsenic and uranium contamination.

Important concepts

• Aquifer: An underground layer that stores and releases water.
  • Alluvial aquifers (Punjab, Haryana) recharge easily; hard-rock aquifers (Peninsular India) store little.
• Recharge: Water that seeps into aquifers from rain, canals, ponds and irrigation. India: 448.52 BCM a year.
• Stage of Groundwater Extraction (SoE): Extraction ÷ extractable resource × 100.
  • Categories: Safe (up to 70%), Semi-critical (70–90%), Critical (90–100%), Over-exploited (above 100%).
• Over-exploitation: Drawing more than the aquifer refills each year, which amounts to mining water.
• Groundwater depletion: A long-term fall in stored groundwater. 
• Groundwater stress: Pressure on supply to meet the demand, even if water is not absent. India measures it by SoE. 
• Groundwater scarcity: Water not available or not usable when needed.
  • Physical scarcity: aquifers drying, as in Bundelkhand or Bengaluru’s borewells in 2024. 
  • Economic scarcity: water exists deeper but the poor cannot afford to reach it, as with Punjab’s small farmers buying water.
• Falkenmark index (per person per year): below 1,700 m³ is stress, below 1,000 m³ scarcity, below 500 m³ absolute scarcity. India’s availability is about 1,486 m³ (2021 estimate), so India is water-stressed.
• Groundwater degradation: Loss of quality. Nitrate (Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra), fluoride (Haryana, Karnataka), arsenic (Ganga–Brahmaputra plains), uranium (Punjab’s Malwa belt).
• Groundwater drought: Water levels stay low even after the monsoon because the aquifer did not refill.
• Virtual water: Water embedded in traded goods. Punjab’s rice and wheat sent to the central pool carry its aquifer out of the State.

How farming practices affect groundwater adversely?

• Wrong crops in wrong places: Paddy needs roughly 3,000–5,000 litres per kg yet is grown in semi-arid Punjab and Haryana; sugarcane dominates drought-prone Marathwada.
• Free or flat-rate power: Free in Punjab since 1997. When pumping costs nothing extra, no one saves water.
• MSP and assured procurement: Only wheat and paddy are reliably bought, which locks farmers into the rice-wheat cycle.
• Flood irrigation: Efficiency of about 35–40%, against about 90% for drip.
• Tube well race: Punjab has about 14 lakh tube wells. Deep submersible pumps replaced shallow ones, and each farmer pumps harder to keep up: a tragedy of the commons (Garrett Hardin, 1968).
  • Tushaar Shah calls India’s groundwater economy an ‘atomistic’ or ‘anarchic’ system: millions of private pumps with no collective control.
• Loss of recharge structures: Ponds, tanks and johads encroached or silted; canals neglected.
• Chemical overuse: Excess urea leaches nitrate into aquifers.
• Soil damage: Compaction, loss of organic matter and stubble burning reduce rain soaking into the ground.
• Drainage failure: Waterlogging and salinity in SW Punjab (Fazilka, Muktsar), the opposite problem.

Present Legal and institutional framework

• Water is a State subject (Entry 17, List II), subject to Entry 56, List I.
• Indian Easements Act, 1882: The landowner can draw the groundwater beneath his land. There is no legal cap on private pumping.
• CGWA under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; its 2020 guidelines on groundwater use exempt agriculture.
• Model Groundwater Bill, 2016 (Mihir Shah Committee): groundwater as a common resource held in public trust.
• Judgments: Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991) read clean water into Article 21.

Challenges before the government

• Subsidy politics: Free power and MSP are hard to touch; metering meets farmer resistance.
• Legal gap: Land-linked groundwater rights leave no cap on private pumping.
• Federal limits: Few States have adopted the Model Bill; the CGWA does not regulate farm use.
• Weak markets for other crops: Maize, pulses and millets lack assured prices, storage and processing.
• Small landholdings: 86% of farmers are small or marginal (Agriculture Census 2015-16); drip costs too much for them.
• Food security: Punjab and Haryana feed the central pool, so a sudden shift could hurt the PDS.
• Data gaps: Sparse observation wells and few metered tube wells.
• Perverse effects: PM-KUSUM solar pumps make pumping free unless linked to buy-back of surplus power.
• Collective action and climate change: Shared aquifer, separate decisions; erratic monsoons raise irrigation demand.

Way ahead

• The Mihir Shah Committee (2016) recommended:
  • Merging the CWC and CGWB into a National Water Commission.
  • Treating groundwater as a common-pool resource held in public trust.
  • Participatory aquifer mapping and management, with farmers as stakeholders.
  • Shifting from supply-side to demand-side management.
  • Procuring water-saving crops to support diversification.
  • Stronger groundwater regulation, taken forward in the Model Groundwater Bill (2016).
• Price reform: Meter power with a free quota and pay for units saved (Pani Bachao Paisa Kamao). Separate farm feeders (Gujarat’s Jyotigram, 2003). Solar power buy-back (Dhundi solar cooperative, Gujarat). 
• Monetary incentives : Pani Bachao Paisa Kamao scheme in Punjab incentivises farmers saving per kilowatt hours below the threshold.
• Crop shift: Per-acre incentives to leave paddy (Haryana’s Mera Pani Meri Virasat). MSP and procurement for maize, pulses, cotton and millets. Direct Seeded Rice and alternate wetting and drying.
• Efficiency: Micro-irrigation under PMKSY ‘Per Drop More Crop’, with group drip for small farmers.
• Recharge: Jal Shakti Abhiyan ‘Catch the Rain’, Mission Amrit Sarovar, MGNREGA water works, canal-based managed aquifer recharge.
• Legal reform: Adopt the Model Groundwater Bill; regulate by aquifer rather than land; bring Punjab into Atal Bhujal Yojana or a State version.
• Community management: Andhra Pradesh Farmer Managed Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS); Hiware Bazar, Maharashtra.
• Target the cultivator: Route benefits to tenants and smallholders, not landowners or pump owners.

Mains Practice Question 

“India’s groundwater crisis is less a problem of nature than of policy.” Discuss with reference to agricultural practices, and suggest measures for sustainable groundwater use. (15 marks, 250 words)

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