10 Punjab districts to go completely out of groundwater in the coming 20 years

In a shocking study report of the Central Ground Water Board of the Ministry of Water Resources published in 2017, Punjab is one of the worst-hit states with 10 of its districts including Bathinda, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Moga, Pathankot, and Patiala suffering the most of the groundwater shortage.

With the report and several other national and state level agencies pointing at the grim scenario for Punjab in the near future, the situation in the state is serious and needs to be dealt with due attention. The state has 79% over-exploiting subsoil water. The subsoil water is the water found immediately below the topsoil.

There has been an annual fall in the subsoil water and as per the current reports, it is around 51 cm per year and if this gets to continue then all water reserves of the state will be emptied in the coming 22 years. This means, there is total probability of the state turning into a desert and that is certainly pretty worry-worthy as Punjab is one of the most productive states in the country with huge contributions in the production of food grains. If the predictions are to turn true then it will be a turning point for Punjab from where onwards it will become a food consumer from being a food producer.

However, the effect is evident now only as the tubewells of the 10 particularly marked districts are being dug as deep as 300 feet in search of water. Thus, irrigation too has posed as a big issue for the agricultural state. Apart from these districts under warning, the state has only 16% such area which is out of the threat of groundwater shortage.

This has been mentioned in a report by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States of America that the rate of depletion of groundwater level in the state is an average of one metre in every three years.

The head of a faction of the Bharatiya Kisan union Balbir Singh Rajewal says, “We alone can’t be blamed for the fall. There are other users such as industry and domestic users who overexploit the subsoil reserves. And schools, colleges and hospitals waste with impunity.”

Also read: One Billion Indians Live In Water-Scarce Areas: Report