The Drying Hinterland
Groundwater levels have fallen alarmingly in many parts of the state
Amid its long-continuing battle with neighbouring Haryana over construction of the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal, Punjab may be heading for some very dry days in the near future. A new study by the Chandigarh-based Centre for Research in Rural & Industrial Development (CRRID) has determined that, on average, the profusion of tubewells across the state pump out 1.5 times the volume of groundwater annually replenished from natural and artificial sources.
The report, ‘Emerging Water Insecurity in India: Lessons from an Agriculturally Advanced State’, authored by CRRID scholars R.S. Ghuman and Rajeev Sharma, reveals that the trend is causing a precipitous decline in the groundwater table in nearly all the districts of the state. In fact, in the southern districts of Sangrur and Moga, and Jalandhar and Kapurthala in the central Doaba region, farmers extract over twice the annual recharge.
Unknown to many, river resources and the elaborate network of irrigation canals crisscrossing the state—including several of British Raj vintage—meet only about 23 per cent of the water needs of Punjab’s farmers; about 77 per cent comes from groundwater.
From 192,000 tubewells in 1971, Punjab today has an unbelievable 1.41 million tubewells con-
THE WATERINTENSE PADDY CROP HAS LED TO A DANGEROUS—SIX TO 22 METRE—DECLINE IN THE WATER TABLE
tinuously extracting groundwater, particularly during the summer cultivation of the highly waterintense paddy crop. This, the study says, has resulted in a dangerous—six to 22 metre—decline in the water table. One hundred of the state’s 138 administrative blocks are already within the ‘overexploited’, ‘dark’ and ‘grey’ zones, with little possibility of installing any additional tubewells for irrigation. It has made farming more expensive, with farmers having to instal heavier pump sets to draw water.
The paddy crop consumes an estimated 80 per cent of the irrigation water in Punjab. And with nearly all the locally grown paddy being exported to the central foodgrains pool, the authors point out that it amounts to ‘exporting Punjab’s subsoil waters to other states in the form of rice’.
Despite the alarming situation that may just turn Punjab’s hinterland into a desert soon, the report says that successive regimes in the state have failed to evolve a water governance policy. Punjab, it says, must diversify its postGreen Revolution cropping pattern to shift out of paddy cultivation.
Shortly after the CRRID scholars’ study was released on August 1, the Amarinder Singh government stayed indefinitely the release of another 150,000 tubewells, allotted as a preelection sop in early 2017 by the previous SADBJP government.