Groundwater Markets in South Asia: A Bibliometric Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Irrigation Development

Abstract

Uninhibited drafting and plummeting groundwater levels have entailed a slew of eco-environmental and socio-economic crises across vast swathes of South Asia, leading to social turmoil over the demand-supply gap in the irrigation sector. We adopted a mixed-method approach, combining systematic bibliometric assessment with contextual analysis, to highlight to the regional water authorities (RWAs) the core tenets of groundwater markets (GWMs), already operating in various capacities and forms in different parts of South Asia, as a potential option to address the crisis. GWMs, occurring along a farmer-water-irrigation continuum, have mixed impacts on groundwater-dependent socio-ecologies, ranging from beneficial to counter-productive. Given the dire projections of groundwater depletion in the near future and the inadequacy of the state machineries to meet surging irrigation demand, a critical policy question that we approached in this narrative was: Can GWMs be institutionalized as a regulatory tool for ‘supply-side’ management of irrigation resources? To that end, we helped RWAs grow a deeper understanding of the complexity and interdisciplinarity associated with the vast network of actors and agencies interlocked within GWMs. By the same token, we urged the RWAs to consider a collective space—potentially in the form of a groundwater users’ association (GWUA)—as a prerequisite to imagining GWMs in an institutional mould. We present a critique of current world experiences with GWUAs and reflect on the socio-environmental barriers of establishing a functional GWUA. We outline tentative means for RWAs to build credibility and increase acceptability of GUWAs at the grassroots, including capacity building, value-based standard operating procedures and harnessing solidarity and social responsibility. In conclusion, we offer RWAs a simple system of a ‘reality’ check, to evaluate the ground conditions and feasibility of contemplating GWMs in the first place.

What do Farmers Don’t Know? A Generic Index to Summarize Cognitive Awareness of Ground water sourced

“…A vast tract of the Indian sub-continent is presently under intense groundwater stress (Chaudhuri and Kaur, 2017;Chaudhuri and Roy, 2016a, b). A great wealth of recent research identifies north-western states as epicentre of groundwater depletion, which also happen to be hot-seats of rice-wheat production and agronomic excellence in the country (Parakh and Chaudhuri, 2021;Duhan et al, 2017;Girotto et al, 2017;Srivastava et al, 2017;Long et al, 2016;Humphrey et al, 2010;Rodell et al, 2009).…”