Environment › Pollution › Water and rivers
Groundwater
India draws about three fifths of the groundwater it can, and that national average hides assessment units already over exploited, most of them where irrigation pulls hardest. The answer being pushed hardest is recharge: under Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari, communities have built more than 1.58 crore small structures to put rainwater back into the aquifer. Whether the water table follows the structure count is the open question.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2022: the body constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
- Prelims 2020: the Central Ground Water Authority and groundwater irrigation
How India measures its groundwater
- The Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment is the Central Ground Water Board's yearly stocktaking with the States, made unit by unit rather than for the country as a whole.
- Each unit is graded safe, semi critical, critical or over exploited by its stage of extraction, so a comfortable national average can still hold districts drawing more than they recharge.
Putting the water back
Chhattisgarh, Korea district
- Aawa Paani Jhoki: farmers gave 5% of their land to recharge ponds and pits
- Groundwater up 3 to 4 metres in many villages
Andhra Pradesh, Prakasam district
- Ridge to valley: treating rainwater from the higher ridges down to the valley
- Water budgeting and crop planning
Odisha
- CHHATA (Community Harnessing and Harvesting of Rainwater Artificially from Terrace to Aquifer): rooftop rainwater harvesting
- ARUA (Artificial Recharge to Underground Aquifer): recharge from ponds and water bodies
- Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari (JSJB), launched in September 2024, builds low cost artificial recharge structures with the community as their owner, guided by the 3Cs of Community, Corporate Social Responsibility and Cost.
- It merged with Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain in June 2026.
What has happened
3 Sep 2026
Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari was reported to have built more than 1.58 crore recharge structures in its first two years.
- Structure counts measure effort rather than outcome, so aquifer levels and demand side measures are the test of it.
PIB, 3 Sep 2026: Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari: From Local Action to Water Security (opens in a new tab)
10 Aug 2026
The Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment 2025 put India's stage of groundwater extraction at 60.63 per cent.
- Annual recharge is 449 billion cubic metres, of which 408 billion is extractable and 247 billion is extracted.
- Irrigation takes 87 per cent of what is extracted, domestic use 11 per cent and industry 2 per cent.
- Extraction runs above the national average in 281 districts and in nine States and Union Territories, among them Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi.
PIB, 10 Aug 2026: Groundwater assessment 2025 (opens in a new tab)