Abstract
India is a groundwater civilization. About 90% of India’s agriculture and 85% of India’s domestic water sectors are dependent on groundwater. On an average, about 50% of water supplied to the cities is sourced from groundwater (Suhag 2016). Close to 30 million wells dot the Indian landscape. Indiscriminate pumping from these wells has led to “groundwater anarchy” (Shah 2009). Access to groundwater is almost unrestricted and individual land rights are inextricably linked to groundwater. At the same time, groundwater is mobile and cannot be stored in one location in its pristine state. This makes enforcement of rights difficult. Some of these complexities in resource characteristics are important to understand before we begin to analyze the different dimensions of participation in India’s groundwater management.
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Biswas, A. (2019). Catalyzing Peoples’ Participation for Groundwater Management. In: Sikdar, P. (eds) Groundwater Development and Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75115-3_22
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