An assessment of recent legal initiatives for improving groundwater governance in PUNJAB

Groundwater (GW) has steadily emerged as the major source of water in India, and it contributes nearly 62% in irrigation, 85% in rural water supply, and 45% in the urban water supply, as per the report presented by Central Ground Water Board in the year 2018. In Punjab, GW provides irrigation to more than 72% of the area under the rice-wheat cropping system, and it has played a crucial role in its emergence as the ‘granary of India’. But the area under rice, a water-guzzling crop grown during summer has increased from 3.90 lac hectares in 1970–71 to 31.03 lac hectares in 2018–19. The runaway growth of GW irrigation has also contributed to the depletion of the water table and is thereby posing a huge environmental challenge. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the recent legal developments for GW governance and assess their effect on the GW situation in the State. However, the increasing stress on aquifers due to GW irrigation has been reduced to an acceptable degree by strengthening and enforcement of legal framework coupled with a set of incentives and disincentives for improving its efficiency. The implementation of The Punjab Preservation of Sub-soil Water Act 2009 has contributed to a reduction in the consumptive use of irrigation water by 413 litres per kg of production of rice due to a change in the crop calendar of rice and the following wheat. It is increasingly acknowledged that for effective GW governance in Punjab, science and policy for GW use need to ûank and complement the legal frameworks.