India’s water crisis came to the fore recently when a long delay in the monsoon led Mumbai’s municipal corporation to restrict water supply. With reduced recharge and rising water demand making groundwater reserves harder to replenish, a rethink on how water is priced, valued and controlled is essential, writes CP Priju.
Urban India’s growing reliance on groundwater
Erratic rainfall patterns, late monsoons, and extreme weather events are all making surface water less reliable. In response, both villages and cities are using groundwater more aggressively, which makes the cycle of depletion in reservoirs, lakes and ponds worse. Even in areas with municipal water systems, private bore wells and tanker services flourish. This has resulted in an unregulated, parallel water economy.
Groundwater plays a crucial role in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had imposed a 20% cut in water supply to industrial, commercial and sports establishments after water stock in the reservoirs supplying Mumbai dropped to 10.4% of total capacity. Groundwater levels in Bengaluru, a city that used to be known for its lakes, have dropped a lot. When cities grow, they cover up natural recharge areas like lakes, wetlands, and open spaces. Instead of going back into the ground, rainwater runs off and overwhelms drainage systems, only to end up in the sea. Because of this, cities go back and forth between having too much (floods) and not enough.
Contaminated groundwater adds to the problem
The sustainable development and efficient management of this limited resource is challenging, especially in the Indian context which has a unique and very diverse hydrogeological and geological setup. Groundwater contamination was seen in nearly one-fifth of tested samples across 440 districts, with uranium, fluoride, nitrate, and arsenic exceeding safe limits as per a 2024 report by the Central Ground Water Board. Key reasons include overuse of fertilisers and pesticides in agriculture leading to nitrate leaching, while fluoride contamination is prevalent in certain geological formations, particularly in states like Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Reckless over-extraction, already exceeding sustainable limits by 1.5 times in states like Punjab, compounds the problem by forcing deeper drilling that worsens water quality. Unlike scarcity, contamination is often irreversible, making immediate action essential to prevent a catastrophe.
The false idea of having a lot of water
India is running out of water, even when there appears to be enough. This contradiction characterises the ongoing groundwater crisis. It is the largest user of groundwater globally, extracting about 230 cubic kilometers annually, which meets over 60% of its irrigation and 85% of rural drinking water supply needs. The main source of replenishable groundwater resources is recharge from rainfall, which contributes to nearly 60 % of the total annual ground water recharge. Over 75% of the annual rainfall is received in the four rainy months for June to September only, thereby leading to large variations on a temporal scale.
In the latest assessment year 2025, the total annual groundwater recharge was assessed as 448.52 billion cublic metre (bcm). Keeping an allocation for natural discharge, the annual extractable ground water resource has been assessed as 407.75 bcm. The annual groundwater extraction (as in 2025) is 247.22 bcm. The average stage of groundwater extraction for the country is 60.63 %. In Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, the stage of groundwater extraction is more than 100%, in Delhi it is above 90% to 100%, while in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, it is above 70% to 90%. In the rest of the country it is less than 70%.
Water politics plays a big role
The main reason for the problem is a political economy that promotes overuse. Free or heavily subsidised energy for farming has led to too much groundwater pumping. Even in areas with little water, crops that need a lot of water, like paddy and sugarcane, are still the most common. There are rules in place, but they are not always followed, and when they are, it is often because of politics. Managing groundwater is harder than managing rivers. It is spread out, in one place, and mostly hidden. Ownership is inextricably linked to land, allowing individuals to extract a shared resource. Metering farm electricity, controlling borewell drilling, and encouraging crop diversification have all faced opposition, often from the same groups that governments rely on. It turns out that water politics and electoral politics are closely related. The main problem is thus structural: how water is priced, valued, and controlled.
Rethinking water as a public good
Policy responses have often depended on laws about collecting rainwater, programmes for developing watersheds, and micro-irrigation systems.Big projects to link rivers promise to redistribute resources, but they also cause environmental and political problems. We need to change how we think about groundwater, from a private resource to a shared one. Local organisations in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh have been able to keep an eye on extraction, as well as promote environmentally friendly methods. Planning for cities need to change too. It’s not possible to protect and fix recharge zones, use water-sensitive design, or control tanker markets.
The author is Principal Scientist, Hydrology and Climatology Research Group, Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM), Kozhikode.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.