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MAKING GROUNDWATER VISIBLE
What the article is about?
- Talks about the concerns associated with present ground water policy and way ahead.
Syllabus: GS-III Conservation of water resources; GS-II Government policies and interventions
Groundwater extraction:
- With an annual groundwater extraction of 248.69 billion cubic meters (2017), India is among the largest users of groundwater in the world.
- Almost 89% of the groundwater extracted is used for irrigation and the rest is for domestic and industrial use (9% and 2%).
- The theme of this year’s World Water Day (March 22) was ‘Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible’.
- The primary focus is to draw attention to the role of groundwater in water and sanitation systems, agriculture, industry, ecosystems, and climate change adaptation.
- Groundwater helps reduce the risk of temporary water shortage and caters to the needs of arid and semiarid regions, but its value has not been fully recognised in policy-making.
- While dependence on groundwater is increasing everywhere, there are serious issues of depletion of stored groundwater and deterioration of quality.
- Available data indicate that the level of extraction for the country in 2017 was 63%, from 58% in 2004
- Of 534 districts in 22 States/UTs, 202 districts had stages of extraction ranging from 71% to 385%.
- NITI Aayog has set the 70% extraction value as the target to be achieved by 2030.
- Besides the high level of extraction, quality is also an issue of concern.
- A quantity-wise safe district may be vulnerable due to deterioration of water quality.
- Fluoride, iron, salinity, nitrate, and arsenic contamination are major problems.
- As many as 335 districts re- ported nitrate pollution compared to 109 in 2006.
- Biological contamination has also been reported from different parts of the country.
Way Ahead:
- As the Mihir Shah Committee (2016) proposed, the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board could be united and a national water framework with an integrated perspective developed.
- There is also a need to work out local-level plans covering water resources in all their forms: rainwater, surface water, soil water and groundwater and the resource use sectors.
- Re-establishing connections between surface and groundwater systems, both for governance and management, entails a local area approach that will involve revisiting the present groundwater estimations process, large-scale aquifer mapping, linking aquifers with river basin/watershed boundaries, hydro-geomorphology analysis, and factoring land uses and human-induced changes in the water system.
- The international conference on ‘Groundwater, Key to the Sustainable Development Goals’ (May 2022) and the UN-Water Summit on Groundwater (December 2022) are part of global initiatives to highlight the significance of groundwater in sustainable development.
