No abstract

Over-reliance on groundwater resources for irrigation has helped achieving food/nutritional targets, at the expense of growing increased vulnerability of water resources in the northwest Indian states. In this reconnaissance study, we take Sonipat district, Haryana as a microcosm, to evaluate potential impacts of Haryana State Groundwater Management and Regulation Bill, 2008 and Haryana Preservation of Sub-Soil Water Act 2009, to understand future requirements of groundwater resources conservation/management. Well level groundwater level (GWL) information was obtained from the Central Groundwater Board’s archive, between 1996 and 2018, disaggregated by tehshils and growing seasons. Results indicated statistically significant (p<0.05) ‘shallowing’ of median GWLs in the Post-Bill periods (2009-2013 and 2014-2018) in the Sonipat and Ganaur tehshils, for all growing seasons, which might gratify the authorities about ‘success’ of the two Regulatory Bills to conserve groundwater. However, (i) presence of ‘outliers’ in Sonipat and Ganaur tehshils (deeper GWLs); (ii) dropping monitoring efficiency over years; and (iii) growing water resources vulnerability by predictive geostatistical modeling, question the above. For future conservation efforts, we urge the authorities to integrate three spheres: (1) Process-based Groundwater Research and Development; (2) Creating an Enabling Environment at Grassroots; and (3) Policy Appraisal and Institutional Changes.

Uninhibited drafting and plummeting groundwater levels have entailed a slew of eco-environmental and socio-economic crises across vast swathes of South Asia, leading to social turmoil over the demand-supply gap in the irrigation sector. We adopted a mixed-method approach, combining systematic bibliometric assessment with contextual analysis, to highlight to the regional water authorities (RWAs) the core tenets of groundwater markets (GWMs), already operating in various capacities and forms in different parts of South Asia, as a potential option to address the crisis. GWMs, occurring along a farmer-water-irrigation continuum, have mixed impacts on groundwater-dependent socio-ecologies, ranging from beneficial to counter-productive. Given the dire projections of groundwater depletion in the near future and the inadequacy of the state machineries to meet surging irrigation demand, a critical policy question that we approached in this narrative was: Can GWMs be institutionalized as a regulatory tool for ‘supply-side’ management of irrigation resources? To that end, we helped RWAs grow a deeper understanding of the complexity and interdisciplinarity associated with the vast network of actors and agencies interlocked within GWMs. By the same token, we urged the RWAs to consider a collective space—potentially in the form of a groundwater users’ association (GWUA)—as a prerequisite to imagining GWMs in an institutional mould. We present a critique of current world experiences with GWUAs and reflect on the socio-environmental barriers of establishing a functional GWUA. We outline tentative means for RWAs to build credibility and increase acceptability of GUWAs at the grassroots, including capacity building, value-based standard operating procedures and harnessing solidarity and social responsibility. In conclusion, we offer RWAs a simple system of a ‘reality’ check, to evaluate the ground conditions and feasibility of contemplating GWMs in the first place.