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.

Keywords:

• water
• groundwater
• conjunctive
• equity
• entitlements
• India

Acknowledgements

We thank the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for hosting the workshop, Multi-Scalar and Cross-Disciplinary Approaches towards Equitable Water Governance (21–23 February 2013), which made this collaborative piece possible. Funding for our travel and stay was provided by this US National Science Foundation Workshop in Cultural Anthropology. We thank the meeting organizers, Flora Lu, Ben Crow, Constanza Ocampo-Raeder, Sarah T. Romano, and the workshop attendees for sparking the ideas presented herein. We acknowledge funding for previous work on the Chennai case study from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and on the Kukdi case study from the IWMI-TATA Water Policy Research Program.