{"id":34708,"date":"2022-11-11T11:27:33","date_gmt":"2022-11-11T05:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=34708"},"modified":"2025-04-20T16:29:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T10:59:31","slug":"groundwater-extraction-this-year-down-6-billion-cubic-metres-from-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/groundwater-extraction-this-year-down-6-billion-cubic-metres-from-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Groundwater Extraction This Year Down 6 Billion Cubic Metres From 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Groundwater and its availability in India<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>GW governance in India<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>GW crisis in India<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>News Summary<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Ministry of Jal Shakti recently released the National Compilation on Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India, 2022.<\/li>\n<li>According to this groundwater assessment report, annual groundwater extraction for irrigation, domestic and industrial uses has decreased by approximately 6 billion cubic metres (bcm) from 2020 to 239 bcm in 2022.\n<ul>\n<li>The assessment was jointly carried out by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), States and Union Territories.\n<ul>\n<li>Last assessment was carried out in 2020.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Groundwater and its availability in India:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Groundwater (GW) is the water that seeps through rocks and soil and is stored below the ground. The rocks in which GW is stored are called aquifers.<\/li>\n<li>This hidden resource accounts for just\u00a0<strong>62% of the total water and 30% of the freshwater\u00a0<\/strong>available on earth.<\/li>\n<li>The underground (hydrogeological) setting in India can be divided into &#8211;\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Hard-rock aquifers of peninsular India:\u00a0<\/strong>These represent around\u00a0<strong>65%<\/strong>\u00a0of India\u2019s overall aquifer surface area, mostly found in central peninsular India<strong>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Alluvial aquifers of the Indo-Gangetic plains:<\/strong>\u00a0Found in the Gangetic and Indus plains in Northern India, these have significant storage spaces.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>GW availability in India:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/media\/editor_images\/2022\/11\/11\/12\/38\/5\/636df4d564ef7e05b67eaada_OI.PNG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/li>\n<li>Out of the 1,123 BCM\/year usable water, the share of GW is 433 BCM<strong>\/<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Groundwater (GW) governance in India:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Legal framework in India does not explicitly define GW ownership and rights, as these are still determined by the archaic Indian Easement Act, 1882.<\/li>\n<li>These rights tied to land ownership rights exclude a large part of the society and\u00a0give landowners the liberty to withdraw limitless water. This leads to violation of the fundamental right to water and the right to life (<strong>Article 21<\/strong>).<\/li>\n<li>The Central GW Board (CGWB) was formed in 1970 specifically to develop GW policies and programs.<\/li>\n<li>It was later empowered by the<strong>\u00a0Environment (Protection) Act in 1986<\/strong>\u00a0to form the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA).<\/li>\n<li>Under this\u00a0GW was acknowledged as a public resource\u00a0supporting the 2004 Supreme Court judgement highlighting the \u2018<strong>public trust doctrine<\/strong>\u2019 &#8211; GW are so important to the population that making them a matter of private ownership would be unjustified.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>GW crisis in India:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In India, GW accounts for a\u00a0quarter of total GW extraction\u00a0in the world\u00a0and is more than the combined extraction in China and the US.<\/li>\n<li>Given the interdependence of water, the environment and socioeconomic well-being, the challenges in GW resource management are &#8211;\n<ul>\n<li>Unregulated extraction<\/li>\n<li>Excessive irrigation<\/li>\n<li>Poor knowledge of GW management system<\/li>\n<li>GW pollution<\/li>\n<li>Climate change<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>As per the\u00a0<strong>2021 CAG report<\/strong>, GW extraction in India increased from 58% to 63%, between 2004-17, exceeding the GW recharge rate and over extraction at the current rate\u00a0can threaten nearly 80% of drinking water over next two decades.<\/li>\n<li>Climate change effects such as intermittent rainfall further alters the recharge potential, posing a huge threat to equitable, healthy and pollution-free access to GW.<\/li>\n<li>As per CGWB estimates many regions are overexploited and a majority were also reported as critical and semi-critical.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Atal Bhujal Yojana<\/strong>\u00a0is a GW management scheme launched by the Government of India in 2019, with the purpose to improve GW management in 7 states of India.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>News Summary\u00a0&#8211; Highlights of the National Compilation on Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India, 2022:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/media\/editor_images\/2022\/11\/11\/12\/38\/6\/636df4d664ef7e05b67eaadb_OI.PNG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The total annual GW recharge was assessed at around 438 bcm in 2022, witnessing an increase by 1.29 bcm as compared to the last assessment (2020).<\/li>\n<li>The total annual extractable GW\u00a0<strong>resources have increased<\/strong>\u00a0by ~1 bcm, however, the annual GW extraction for irrigation, domestic and industrial uses have\u00a0<strong>decreased\u00a0<\/strong>by ~6 bcm during this period, in line with the similar decline trend since 2017.<\/li>\n<li>Irrigation accounts for\u00a0<strong>approximately 87%<\/strong>\u00a0(~208 bcm) of total annual GW extraction, the rest ~31 bcm is for domestic and industrial use.<\/li>\n<li>These variations are attributed mainly to refinement of parameters, refinement in well census data and changing GW regime.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ministry of Jal Shakti recently released National Compilation on Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}