UPSC Mains 2024 GS1 Q14: Gangetic Valley Groundwater Decline and India’s Food Security

Groundwater levels across parts of the Gangetic valley, especially in the northwest, have declined for decades under intensive irrigation. This is a well-documented, long-running trend, not a recent shock.

Punjab and Haryana’s paddy-wheat rotation, encouraged since the Green Revolution, pumps groundwater far faster than monsoon rain can recharge it. Free or subsidised electricity for pumping removed any cost check on extraction.

The Gangetic valley, especially its northwestern belt, has long been India’s largest contributor to national foodgrain output. Its groundwater and its food-security role are directly linked.

As water tables fall, farmers must drill deeper and pump harder to reach water. Rising costs squeeze farm incomes even before any drop in yield actually occurs.

Paddy and wheat, the crops anchoring this belt’s output, depend heavily on assured groundwater irrigation. A shrinking, less reliable water table risks yield decline exactly where India’s food supply depends on consistency.

A sustained decline could force farmers away from paddy toward less water-intensive crops. This would ease groundwater stress but could also reduce the region’s contribution to national rice procurement.

Falling water tables can also affect groundwater quality, including arsenic and fluoride contamination in some areas. Quality decline threatens both drinking water and irrigation water together.

The eastern Gangetic plain, in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, often has underused groundwater potential even as the northwest is over-exploited. Better-targeted use of the eastern plain’s capacity could ease pressure on the depleted northwest.

Because this belt supplies such a large share of national foodgrain output, a regional groundwater problem here becomes a national food-security risk, not merely a local agricultural issue.

State the declining-potential trend and its Green Revolution-era cause, then trace direct effects (pumping cost, yield risk) and indirect effects (forced cropping shifts, water quality) on food security, closing with the east-west imbalance as part of the solution.