Groundwater Depletion and Sustainable Water Resource Management in India

Groundwater is central to India’s agricultural production, domestic water security and resilience to rainfall variability, yet intensive abstraction has created severe and spatially uneven sustainability pressures. This paper examines the scale, causes and consequences of groundwater depletion in India and evaluates pathways towards sustainable water-resource management. The study adopts a descriptive, analytical and comparative secondary-data design using the Central Ground Water Board’s Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment 2025, groundwater-quality monitoring, Central Water Commission assessments, government programme documents and peer-reviewed research. The analysis is framed through the water–energy–food nexus and common-pool resource perspectives. The 2025 national assessment estimated annual groundwater recharge at 448.52 billion cubic metres (BCM), annual extractable resources at 407.75 BCM and annual extraction at 247.22 BCM, giving a national stage of groundwater extraction of 60.63%. However, this national average conceals acute regional stress: Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana recorded extraction stages of 156.36%, 147.11% and 136.75%, respectively. Irrigation accounted for approximately 87% of total groundwater extraction, demonstrating the central role of agricultural demand. The paper finds that groundwater stress results from the interaction of water-intensive cropping systems, procurement and electricity incentives, hydrogeological constraints, climatic variability and fragmented governance. Although recent assessments show a declining proportion of over-exploited assessment units, long-term storage losses persist in major agricultural regions. Sustainable management therefore requires aquifer-specific water budgeting, crop diversification, incentive reform, efficient irrigation, managed recharge, conjunctive water use, community participation and strengthened monitoring. Groundwater policy must move beyond increasing supply towards managing demand within locally defined hydrogeological limits.