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groundwater storage with surface water system and serves as both a remedial and corrective
measure for preventing water logging and for efficient use and management of water
resources should be emphasized.
A 1f
Situation of groundwater management in the country
India contains a wide diversity of hydrogeological settings. The utilizable groundwater
resources in the country have been assessed as 45.34 million ha m per year and the
current level of groundwater development is about 30% of the amount available for irrigation.
Groundwater development is not, however, uniform all over the country. In a number of
areas, intensive groundwater development has led to rather critical situations and the
emergence of problems like declining water levels, shortage in supply and saline water
encroachment, etc. The need for in-depth analysis of problems that have emerged due to
extensive development of groundwater in certain areas should be emphasized.
India has a very large cropped area under irrigation. The gross irrigated area is about
42% of the gross cropped area. The gross area irrigated from groundwater sources is
about 44.5% of the total area that can ultimately be irrigated from groundwater and is
47.5% of the total cropped area under irrigation. Groundwater plays a critical role in
meeting the growing needs of Indian people for drinking, domestic, industrial and irrigation
purposes.
The use of groundwater in India for irrigation has taken place from the time immemorial.
The history of open well construction can be traced back to the epic of Vedas (3,000 B.C.
to 800 B.C.) wherein mention has been made concerning irrigation from wells. Localized
use of groundwater through open wells continued during the medieval periods particularly
in areas where surface water supplies were not available. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, open wells formed an important source of irrigation and accounted for nearly
30% of the total irrigation in the country. The first large scale venture in the development
of groundwater for irrigation was taken in 1934 when a project for construction of about
1,500 public deep tube wells in the Ganga basin was initiated. Since the middle of the
1960s the importance of groundwater for irrigation has been increasingly realized. Recurrent
droughts, and advent of high yielding varieties of wheat and rice (which require timely and
carefully managed irrigation) and the introduction of an incentive oriented agricultural
price policy by the Government, paved the way for extensive development of groundwater
irrigation in the country.
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