Groundwater

Featured Articles
October 17, 2022
Invisible informal groundwater markets
While informal groundwater markets cater significantly to the needs of smallholder farmers in India, they continue to be unacknowledged and understudied.
Groundwater, a finite resource (Image Source: TV Manoj via Wikimedia Commons)
July 5, 2022
Poisoned waters, threatened lives
Studies reveal that children are the most vulnerable to the health risks associated with groundwater contamination due to nitrate and fluoride, highlighting the need for urgent remedial measures.
POisoned waters, dangerous outcomes (Image Source: India Water Portal)
April 26, 2022
Making the invisible, visible
The water stewardship initiative by WOTR that developed a tool to visualise aquifers has not only helped farmers understand groundwater as a shared resource, but also led to a behavioural change among water users and helped implement groundwater laws and policies.
Groundwater, a fast disappearing resource (Image Source: India Water Portal)
February 13, 2022
Poisonous encounters, fatal outcomes!
A study provides new evidence that drinking water contaminated with arsenic can lead to still births, recurrent pregnancy loss and infertility among women.
A well in Rajasthan (Image Source: IWP Flickr photos)
August 29, 2021
Poisoned waters, deadly outcomes!
A study shows that high arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bihar is linked with increase in cancer cases. Districts located near the Himalayan river basins have more people with cancer.
Drinking water in Bihar, linked to cancer (Image Source: IWP Flickr photos)
August 26, 2021
Poisonous encounters: Nitrate contamination of groundwater in Rajasthan
This study from Rajasthan found that anthropogenic factors led to nitrate contamination of groundwater. High nitrate levels in drinking water posed major health risks to children.
A well in Rajasthan (Image Source: IWP Flickr photos)
Farm ponds need pondering
While farm ponds have often been depicted as magic wands to deal with water scarcity, experiences in Maharashtra show otherwise.
Ninad K Sargar
Posted on 18 Sep, 2020 09:31 AM

Agriculture and inefficient water use in India
Farm ponds, often touted as magic wands to tackle water scarcity, have raised a number of concerns (Image Source: Ninad Sargar)
Uttarakhand: Reaching the unreached
PSI addresses the shortage of safe drinking water in remote Uttarakhand villages through a participatory community-based approach to springshed management.
Puran Bartwal
People’s Science Institute
Posted on 11 Sep, 2020 07:48 PM

People in remote hamlets left out by previous schemes like Swajal and Sector Wide Approach Program of the Uttarakhand Jal Nigam and Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan longed for household-level piped water supply for drinking and domestic purposes.
Women trudged long distances daily to fetch water for their basic household needs in Rupail (Image: People's Science Institute)
Aqua Foundation’s XIV World Aqua Congress
The conference provides a unique opportunity to learn about the latest trends in best practices, innovative technologies and cutting edge research.
Posted on 11 Sep, 2020 12:36 PM

About the conference: 
IUKWC Virtual User Engagement Initiative 2020
The India UK Water Centre welcomes you to a free, online event to engage with new water research tools and methods that could contribute to your operational practice.
Posted on 04 Sep, 2020 07:24 AM

IUKWC has put together a set of interviews with researchers from six Indo-UK projects that provide an overview of their research outputs and how these can support water operations, management and/or decision making.

Fully interactive - interviewees will be available to answer your questions during two hour windows
Drying veins of Ganga: Can we have ‘Nirmal Ganga’ with dying tributaries?
There is an urgent need to prioritise uninterrupted river flow over unpolluted flow in the Namami Gange programme.
Adeel Khan
Praharsh Patel
Posted on 27 Aug, 2020 05:22 PM

India’s Himalayan rivers have been a cradle of civilisational development and a centre for faith and culture for ages. Ganga being a fertile basin has been a significant contributor to our agricultural economy as well as our river-based agrarian development.
The Baand river is nearly dry even when the region saw above normal monsoon this year. Much of the riverbed is encroached by farms. (Image: Adeel Khan and Praharsh Patel)
Arghyam is looking for a Mission Leader - Partner Engagements
Arghyam is looking for a motivated, passionate and hands on leader to work with actors in the water ecosystem to enable the scale of solutions to solve water crisis in India.
Posted on 20 Aug, 2020 03:51 PM

About Arghyam 
Groundwater extraction: NGT gets strict with commercial entities
Policy matters this week
Swati Bansal
Posted on 12 Aug, 2020 08:41 AM

NGT bans granting general permissions for groundwater extraction to commercial entities
NGT gets strict with commercial entities (Source: IWP Flickr album)
Banking on rainwater harvesting
National Water Mission’s campaign aims at creating rainwater harvesting structures in various parts of India.
Qazi Syed Wamiq Ali
National Water Mission
Posted on 11 Aug, 2020 10:27 AM

National Water Mission’s (NWM) has launched a campaign ‘Catch the rain’ on a pan India basis to nudge the states and stakeholders to create appropriate rainwater harvesting structures (RWHS) suitable to the climatic conditions and sub-soil strata before the onset of monsoon.
As a part of the campaign, work is being done on various interventions such as water for productive use, improving irrigation practices, creating water recharge structures (Image: Pikist)
Understanding Atal Bhujal Yojana through the program guidelines
The program envisages promoting panchayat led groundwater management and behavioural change with a primary focus on demand-side management.
Manisha Shah
Nikita Deshpande
Posted on 10 Aug, 2020 03:59 PM

Groundwater fulfills the drinking water requirements of nearly 85% and 50% of the rural and urban Indian population, respectively. 65% of the total irrigated area utilizes groundwater. It also caters to the water needs of the industrial sector in India.
Community participation is expected to facilitate bottom-up groundwater planning process to improve the effectiveness of public financing and align implementation of various government programs on groundwater in the participating states (Image: Water Alternatives, Flickr Commons)
Money, migration and missing capital: The case of Uttarakhand
In times of heightened interest in migration and migrants, a lecture deals with key issues underpinning it.
Impact and Policy Research Institute
Posted on 27 Jul, 2020 10:34 PM

Uttarakhand’s rural areas are marked by massive outflux of people and it is believed that rural migration may alter the state’s political geography.
Village in Uttarakhand (Image: Paul Hamilton; Flickr Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
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