What is the issue?
- In India groundwater is rapidly getting depleted due to various reasons.
- Union and State governments are taking various measures in this regard.
What is the status of groundwater depletion in India?
- Central Ground Water Board (CWGB) has conducted a study on Rapidly-depleting groundwater in 6584 blocks across the country.
- The CWGB assessment shows that groundwater in 1,034 of 6,584 blocks were over-exploited.
- More water was being drawn out annually than was being recharged.
- Further 934 blocks suffered from different stages of groundwater depletion.
- Tamil Nadu had the most number of over-exploited blocks but Punjab was the worst in percentage terms with over 75% of its assessed blocks falling in the over-exploited category.
- Other worst affected states were Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi.
What are the measures taken by the union government?
- Government of India has planned to implement a Water Conservation scheme Atal Bhoojal Yojana, with a fund of Rs.6,000 crores.
- Under this scheme, ground water will be recharge and hence it will provide sufficient water for the use of agriculture purposes.
- This scheme will also revive the water bodies like rivers so that the level of ground water can be increased especially in the rural areas.
- The fund for this project will be raised by the Ministry of Finance and the World Bank.
What are the measures taken by Punjab government?
- Punjab governments initially nudged the state’s farmers into increasing paddy acreage by providing nearly-free electricity for pumping out groundwater and backing intensive MSP-driven procurement of paddy harvest.
- Now the Punjab state government is looking at steps to reduce the cultivation of water-intensive paddy.
- Recently the government has launched a pilot project in three villages under which digital meters will be installed on tube wells belonging to nearly 1,000 farmers in the three villages.
- Instead of compensating the state discoms for free power supply, the state will deposit certain amount of money in the accounts of the farmers.
- The farmers will be billed directly by the Discom on the basis of actual consumption.
- The state has entered into an agreement with experts from the World Bank, Punjab Agricultural University and various state departments.
- These agencies will estimate the actual power use by farmers and how it might change following the direct benefits transfer (DBT).
- If the actual costs for farmers surpass the DBT amount, it is possible that farmers might rethink their paddy preference.
Source: Business Line
