India is nearing “water bankruptcy” as rapid groundwater depletion outpaces recharge, demanding urgent, science-led reforms and collective action to secure its water future
As humanity progresses into the Anthropocene, its water landscape is staring at an unprecedented and accelerating crisis. Aquifers, the natural shock-absorbers that shielded us from droughts, failed monsoons, and ever-rising urban demands, are now depleting at an alarming rate. The latest United Nations University study, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era, warns that many of the world’s aquifers have irreversibly crossed ecological tipping points. Not only are individual countries at risk; entire regions stand on the brink of “water bankruptcy.” The world is rapidly exhausting its water capital, outpacing its natural replenishment capacity, and hurtling toward acute, irreparable global scarcity.
Against this grim global backdrop, India’s growing dependence on groundwater, unregulated extraction, and rapid aquifer exhaustion exposes it to an immediate risk of water bankruptcy.
Aggregating scientific evidence, the UNU report reveals that at least half of the world’s major aquifers are in long-term decline, with many experiencing irreversible depletion. However, groundwater depletion is an uneven phenomenon. The steepest decline in groundwater levels is observed most in areas where agricultural activities converge with rapid urban growth.
A landmark study published by Nature of nearly 170,000 wells worldwide revealed that North America, West Asia, northern China, Australia, and South Asia have experienced a widespread decline in groundwater levels exceeding 0.5 metres per year. What makes these declines concerning is not merely their pace but their permanence. Rampant extraction of water has compressed aquifers in these regions, making them lose their natural storage capacity, a process known as aquifer compaction.
Groundwater depletion also leads to land subsidence, the gradual sinking of the ground surface. For example, parts of central Iran, including Tehran, and Mexico City, are sinking by centimetres each year. On the other hand, major deltaic regions — including the Mississippi, Niger, Nile, Rhine-Meuse, Po, Vistula, Brahmani, Mahanadi, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Chao Phraya, Mekong, and Brantas, already facing climate change impacts such as rising seas and sinking land — face even greater risks as depleted aquifers accelerate ground subsidence and seawater intrusion.
India’s position in this global narrative remains both exceptional and alarming. Drawing about 25 percent of all groundwater extracted worldwide, the country is the world’s single largest user of groundwater. Groundwater irrigates roughly 62 percent of India’s agricultural land, supplies 85 percent of rural drinking water, and meets nearly half of urban water requirements.
The Central Ground Water Board’s 2025 compilation classifies 26 percent of India’s total 6,762 groundwater blocks in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Puducherry as “over-exploited,” “critical,” or “semi-critical,” indicating chronic groundwater depletion.
According to the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), India extracts around 247 billion cubic metres (bcm) annually, a figure that rivals the combined extraction of the United States and China. However, regional extremes within India are more alarming. For example, in Punjab, a critical state for India’s food security, groundwater extraction exceeds recharge by 150 percent. The Central Ground Water Board’s 2025 compilation classifies 26 percent of India’s total 6,762 groundwater blocks in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Puducherry as “over-exploited,” “critical,” or “semi-critical,” indicating chronic groundwater depletion.
Changing monsoon patterns have further aggravated this crisis. In a vicious cycle of climate variability and groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall, particularly in north-western India, has increased reliance on borewells, spurring greater groundwater extraction and further accelerating aquifer decline.
Although agriculture primarily drives groundwater demand, Indian cities are also increasingly causing its depletion. While cities, including Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi, depend heavily on borewells, groundwater is often the only source of water in the peripheries of these megacities, where piped water is mostly absent.
A 2025 study of Delhi (National Capital Region), Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai, published in Nature Sustainability, shows a direct link between land subsidence and groundwater depletion, affecting over 13 million buildings and nearly 80 million residents. Studies of satellite imagery from 2020 to 2023 in Ahmedabad have also linked the ‘line of sight’ land subsidence with acute groundwater extraction, with annual land subsidence ranging from -1.5 cm to -3.5 cm across the city.
Urban aquifer depletion has severe environmental, health and social impacts:
These escalating impacts not only signal water scarcity but also the imminent threat of water insolvency, in which rapidly disappearing natural hydrological buffers demand extraordinary and urgent corrective measures.
Though India has taken significant steps to strengthen groundwater governance, outcomes have remained uneven. The Ministry of Jal Shakti’s 2020 Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABJ) aims to improve groundwater management across seven Indian states through community-led water budgeting, aquifer mapping, local planning, and other interventions, including check-dam construction and crop diversification. ABJ’s localised, participatory interventions have led to efficient groundwater management in most pilot areas in Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. However, such gradual restoration of aquifer capacity is overshadowed by the nationwide decline in water tables.
Weak enforcement of compliance requirements and populist political decisions, such as free or subsidised electricity for irrigation and the waiving of licences for domestic borewells, undermine the incentives to reduce pumping.
Regulatory limitations and fragmented governance further dampen such gains. Though challenged by growing environmental concerns, judicial interventions, and evolving regulations, especially in areas with critical overexploitation, the colonial-era land ownership laws still give landowners in India an unrestricted right to groundwater extraction. Weak enforcement of compliance requirements and populist political decisions, such as free or subsidised electricity for irrigation and the waiving of licences for domestic borewells, undermine the incentives to reduce pumping.
The UNU report emphasises the global need for “hydrological transparency,” with accurate, open water accounts that quantify renewable flows, extraction, and storage. India’s efforts are moving in this direction, but institutional fragmentation is still a significant barrier.
India must assess the capacities of all its major aquifers and urgently mandate legally enforceable extraction limits in all cities. It must leverage its advancements in GIS-integrated remote-sensing satellites to generate granular data to assess the health of its aquifers. Prioritising water-saving crops, tied to procurement reforms and technology support, can gradually ease pressure in Punjab and Haryana.
India must assess the capacities of all its major aquifers and urgently mandate legally enforceable extraction limits in all cities. It must leverage its advancements in GIS-integrated remote-sensing satellites to generate granular data to assess the health of its aquifers.
Tradable groundwater rights that allow users to buy, sell, or lease legal entitlements to extract specific volumes of groundwater from aquifers prevalent in the United States and Australia, trading mechanisms for the reuse of treated wastewater, district-level water budgets, and community-based aquifer stewardship can help raise awareness that groundwater is a shared resource whose depletion calls for collective responsibility. Given the criticality of groundwater systems for monsoon-dependent economies, India must similarly integrate groundwater into its broader climate adaptation agenda.
As India extracts a quarter of the world’s groundwater and many of its aquifers sink into long-term deficit, the nation stands at a critical juncture. Recognising the perils of the post-crisis era, as defined by the UNU report, requires tackling the structural issues of groundwater decline with solutions grounded in the new hydrological reality rather than incremental interventions. Without immediate, decisive and comprehensive structural reforms anchored in scientific accountability, regulatory enforcement, and robust community-led action, India will soon become mired in a state of water bankruptcy from which recovery may prove a daunting task.
Without immediate, decisive and comprehensive structural reforms anchored in scientific accountability, regulatory enforcement, and robust community-led action, India will soon become mired in a state of water bankruptcy from which recovery may prove a daunting task.
India must urgently articulate the true depth of its groundwater crisis and prepare a coherent, whole-of-society response strategy commensurate with the scale of this impending catastrophe.
Dhaval Desai is a Senior Fellow and Vice President at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Dhaval is a Vice President - Platforms and Communities at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. His spectrum of work covers diverse topics ranging from urban renewal ...
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