Groundwater management through recharge interventions: a case study of Gujarat

India is a water stressed country. Regionwise scenario is different but in general surface water resources are not sufficient to fulfil the need of the country. Available sites for water storage are limited and are located in reach regions which makes it difficult to rationally distribute the available surplus water resources to the deprived regions. This compels the extraction of groundwater in the deprived regions. Even in the command areas of the dams the tail enders do not get water and hence they have to depend on groundwater. Cropping pattern has been continuously changing due to market variations and hence the regions which are not expected to grow water-intensive crops have started growing them by meeting the water demand from precious groundwater. Objective of agriculture has been changed from food production to profit-making. Urbanization and Industrialization have furthered the dependence on groundwater. The erratic rainfall sometime is the cause of depending on groundwater. In all, the reasons for dependence on groundwater are many and the overall dependence on groundwater has been at present between 50% to 90% in different parts of India. For last so many years that the dependence on groundwater has been on increase which has paused a serious threat of quantity and quality of water almost in the entire country and the present model of economy, agriculture and development as a whole has become a subject of reconsideration on the ground of sustainability and environmental change. The root cause of this situation is the unsustainable ways of resource management we have adopted. The paper underlines the need of paying attention at the groundwater quantity and quality of India and presents a case study of Gujarat showing the effectiveness of scientifically planned and implemented recharge interventions with detailed discussion of quantity and quality improvements in the groundwater scenario of the state. The objective of the paper is not limited to discussion on issues but underlining the significance of the efforts to address them and their results so that the future course could be corrective and is approached early to save the future of the entire country.