Examining the emerging role of groundwater in water inequity in India

Abstract

This article addresses a gap in the water equity literature arising from the simultaneous use of surface water and groundwater in India. Using two diverse case studies -one agricultural (Kukdi) and one urban (Chennai) -we demonstrate how gaps in planning, design and policy exacerbate inequity. Groundwater abstraction from user wells allows wealthier users to both free-ride and capture a greater share of the resource. By converting a public resource to a private one, it worsens inequity and jeopardizes the sustainability of water projects. The article suggests that better monitoring, inter-agency coordination and rethinking water entitlements and norms are needed for going forward.

Farmers' Willingness to Pay for Improved Irrigation Water — A Case Study of Malaprabha Irrigation Project in Karnataka, India

“…Thirdly, borewell ownership as indicated by the land under borewell irrigation turned out to have a significant and negative influence on their WTP value. The implication is that farmers prefer groundwater to the prevailing supply of surface irrigation water due to the high level of control they have over groundwater use (see also Srinivasan and Kulkarni 2014). Finally, members of WUAs did not have a significantly different value for improved water supply as compared to the non-members.…”

“…Groundwater is an important source of irrigation and a substitute for surface irrigation; considering that nearly 47% of the farmers we interviewed had at least one working borewell, it was expected that the size of the area under groundwater irrigation would be negatively related to the WTP value. Since borewells provide better control over water supply than the supply through canal systems and electricity for agricultural operations is highly subsidized, farmers were expected to have higher preference toward groundwater, thereby placing a lower WTP value on the canal water (see Tang et al 2013;Srinivasan and Kulkarni 2014).…”

“…The probability of a yes response declines by 0.021 percentage points for every unit increase in area under groundwater irrigation (Table 8). Srinivasan and Kulkarni (2014) pointed out that the farmers using groundwater have better control over the timing and the quantity of water to use. In Karnataka, electricity is free for farmers with borewells operated with less than 10 HP motors and almost all of the farmers with borewells use a 5 HP or a 7.5 HP motor in the study area.…”

Meta‐Modeling‐Based Groundwater Remediation Optimization under Flexibility in Environmental Standard

“…These naphthalene pollutants may pose significant threats to the underlying groundwater and the health of the neighboring communities (Marouane et al, 2015;Rogers et al, 2015). This provides adequate reason for a great effort to remediate such contaminated aquifers and to develop appropriate groundwater management systems (Batabyal and Chakraborty, 2015;Cuadrado-Quesada, 2014;Kong et al, 2014;Samuel et al, 2014;Singh and Chakrabarty, 2010;Srinivasan and Kulkarni, 2014). A large number of remediation technologies have been applied to remove contaminants from groundwater to protect the groundwater quality and public health.…”

An Equity Autopsy: Exploring the Role of Water Rights in Water Allocations and Impacts for the Central Valley Project during the 2012–2016 California Drought

“…Because equity is a somewhat nebulous concept, scholars have investigated empirically how equity has been operationalized and acted out by communities of water users in a range of contexts, including poor water access in indigenous and Hispano communities in the U.S. Southwest [25]; a wide variety of case studies across Mexico, Spain, the American Southwest, and Pacific Northwest [30]; and the Global South [31][32][33][34][35]. Recent work has also explored the "climate gap" between disadvantaged and more affluent communities in relation to the degree of vulnerability to climate change and resources for mitigation and adaptation in communities near the Arizona and New Mexico border [36].…”