It’s a bid to make India water-secure, inch by inch, one well at a time. Aiming to increase awareness of the country’s groundwater situation, the Napo Jal Bachao Kal campaign has mapped over 60,000 distinct wells in more than 18,000 villages over the last six years — with over 35,000 wells mapped before the onset of the monsoon this year alone.
This annual groundwater monitoring exercise uses an open-source tool — the Groundwater Monitoring Tool (GWMT) — to collect data on well water levels, helping to improve understanding of groundwater resources and enabling informed decision-making for better use, governance and management. The campaign, launched in 2020 by the Foundation for Ecological Security’s (FES) India Observatory initiative, has brought together thousands of people, armed with just a measuring tape and a mobile phone, to measure the water levels in their village wells twice a year — before and after the monsoons.
Priti Kiran Bele, a farmer from Murli village in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district who has been involved with the campaign since its inception, says that participation has increased over the years. “Earlier, people weren’t much involved, but we regularly held meetings to make them understand the purpose of the exercise. Now both men and women actively participate in the process,” she says, adding that the drive has helped them make judicious use of water for agriculture and other needs.
“It helps us plan which crops to plant for that season. If there is less water, we sow crops like soybean and a bit of cotton,” Bele explains. “On the other hand, groundnut and some wheat is planted if we see enough water.” According to the 40-year-old, every farm in the village grew groundnut 20 years ago, but its cultivation has reduced over time due to water scarcity. “Water level has decreased in the Waghadi river that flows nearby. This has made people realise the need to adopt water-saving practices,” she says.
Replicate the situation in Murli village to other parts of India, and the picture becomes clearer. Groundwater provides about 50% of global domestic water use and over 40% of irrigation water. Drinking water security as well as food production depend heavily on aquifers, 70% of which show long-term declines worldwide, according to the United Nations University’s recent Global Water Bankruptcy report. “For many of the Global South nations, water is not an abstract environmental topic, but the foundation of food security, employment, rural stability, and national identity,” the report states.
In India, the situation assumes more alarming proportions. The country is the largest groundwater user in the world, accounting for 25% of all groundwater extracted every year globally. About 70% of agriculture and 85% of India’s drinking water supply depends on groundwater. However, water tables are shrinking rapidly, spurred by factors such as increasing water demand due to rapid urbanisation and population growth, erratic rainfall patterns and the increasing frequency of droughts, dependence on borewells for growing water-intensive crops like paddy and sugarcane on ill-suited lands, and contamination from industrial waste, fertilisers, pesticides, and other pollutants.
A 2023 University of Michigan-led study found that warming temperatures have prompted farmers in India to intensify groundwater withdrawal for irrigation. It noted that if this trend persists, the rate of groundwater loss could triple by 2080, putting India’s food and water security in jeopardy.
The critical situation is further compounded by the fact that data on groundwater levels in India remains sparse, fragmented and often of poor quality, making it difficult to chalk out long-term and widescale plans for sustainable management of groundwater.
“Napo Jal Bachao Kal aims to fill this gap,” says Chiranjit Guha, General Manager at FES, who leads the initiative. “Measuring the water levels in wells before and after the monsoons tells us the status of groundwater at its lowest and highest levels.”
Recalling the initiative’s journey over the last six years, he says people were initially apprehensive about its purpose. “We faced questions about why it was needed, and what the outcome will be,” he reveals. “Since it was the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we could not expect much then. We still monitored 18,000 wells in the first year.”
With time, as the maps and analytics were shared with the communities, people as well as civil society organizations began to see the big picture and understand the tool’s relevance, Guha says.
“We initially made simple maps to show to the communities, like green colour indicating that the water table has been increasing for 5-6 years, or yellow and red showing stable or declining levels, respectively,” Guha recollects. “In 2022, when this tool was shown to the Ministry of Rural Development, they understood its value for collection of ground water data across the country, resulting in the launch of the Jaldoot application in their environment. Its only difference with GWMT is that panchayats have to register to record the data. Their reach is much higher, about 450,000 wells. They are collecting 10 times more data across the country, which is a very good thing. We are complementing the data that Jaldoot is collecting.”
Related Articles
Here is a list of articles selected by our Editorial Board that have gained significant interest from the public:
The monitoring of water levels has led to effective interventions in villages across multiple levels. In the Angapada village in Odisha, the local government has used GWMT to monitor 32 wells since 2022. The data has helped them understand the declining groundwater trend and identify the need for water conservation measures.
“Our village has faced water scarcity for many years,” says Jitendra Sahoo, head of Angapada’s village council. He adds that even though they knew that wells and hand pumps dried up in summer, they did not understand why. “Regular well monitoring has made us realise that although rainfall is good, groundwater recharge is insufficient because of high surface runoff. The monitoring data has helped us identify the need for recharge structures,” he says.
The community has now integrated the groundwater data into itsevelopment plan and proposed activities such as pond deepening; constructing farm ponds and rainwater harvesting structures; and undertaking groundwater recharge works starting this month to improve groundwater recharge and strengthen long-term water security.
Like Angapada, the Napo Jal Bachao Kal campaign now has footprints in about 20,000 villages across 14 states, involving more than 19,700 registered GWMT app users and 120 NGO partners who have monitored over 60,000 distinct wells.
The results are fed into a continuously evolving database on the Groundwater Monitoring Portal, an open-access web platform. They are presented as visuals showing India’s water levels, and can be downloaded as maps or as Excel files for village-, block-, state-, and national-level analysis..
As the world sits on the verge of a groundwater crisis, Napo Jal Bachao Kal encourages people to look not just deep within the Earth, but also far into the future.
** **
This article was prepared with inputs from team members of the Foundation for Ecological Security’s India Observatory initiative.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com
