Catalysing Groundwater Governance Through People’s Participation and Institutional Reform

India’s groundwater usage is the largest in the world. Nearly, all sectors, especially rural domestic water and water in agriculture, have large-scale dependencies on groundwater resources. Groundwater exploitation, without due consideration to the concept of aquifers as common pool resources, has led to the dual problem of groundwater depletion and contamination. Groundwater depletion has also led to depletion in river flow. Competition over groundwater resources has slowly emerged as a complex problem across India’s diverse aquifer typology, sometimes leading to conflict. The rise in the number of wells across the small land holdings in India has meant that groundwater extraction occurs at high granularity, making it difficult for large-scale data and information to capture the reality of problems of the ground. The social, economic and environmental consequences of groundwater over-extraction in India is as much related to the variability in the transmission and storage properties of different aquifers as it is about the diversity in the social context of people who use groundwater resources. Community-based norms on managing groundwater resources have been one of the emergent areas of responding to the crisis of groundwater management in the field. Policy, on the other hand, has been toying with conventional regulatory responses, mainly through groundwater legislation. The gap between the policy and practice of groundwater management is quite wide and requires a combination of groundwater management and governance. Institutionalizing the integration of groundwater management and governance, although seemingly challenging, has become crucial in addressing India’s groundwater crises. Combining demystified science, people’s participation and institutional reform to bring to the fore the concept of aquifers as common pool resources can form a solid foundation for catalysing groundwater governance in India.