Your search found 2 records
1 Patel, Praharsh; Saha, D. 2019. Reckoning the ground water recharge in semi-arid region: an assessment of community led policy performance in Saurashtra. Paper presented at the 3rd World Irrigation Forum (WIF3) on Development for Water, Food and Nutrition Security in a Competitive Environment, Bali, Indonesia, 1-7 September 2019. 10p.
Groundwater recharge ; Semiarid zones ; Water policy ; Community involvement ; Water resources ; Aquifers ; Groundwater depletion ; Groundwater table ; Rain ; Monsoon climate ; Impact assessment / India / Gujarat / Maharashtra / Saurashtra / Marathawada / Vidarbha
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049667)
(0.24 MB) (248 KB)
Easy access, round the year availability even in the draught years and lack of regulations coupled with advanced and cheap technology to create extraction structure have been major factors responsible for indiscriminate extraction of groundwater. With a rise in population leading to increasing water requirement, the untapped groundwater resource has been the biggest bone of contention amongst multiple stakeholders with a threat of serious depletion in many parts of the world especially regions without perennial surface water availability and arid or semi-arid climate. India is the largest extractor of groundwater and the alarming situation has already tapped in. Semi-arid region of Saurashtra has the most extreme case with just 500 mm of rainfall and almost 40 percent of coefficient of variation leading to frequent drought-like condition. Saurashtra's almost 83 per cent of the total irrigated area is through groundwater. High extraction of groundwater of Saurashtra caused major groundwater depletion in the region. The condition even intensified during consecutive drought years of 1985-87 when Saurashtra received just 93 mm of total rainfall during 1987 on top of 60 per cent rainfall in 2 consecutive drought years of 1985 (299 mm) and 1986 (298 mm). Severity of the condition led to a mass movement for rainwater harvesting as well as a decentralized groundwater recharge at an unprecedented scale. The community-led movement with the support of local leaders, merchants and religious gurus in the early 90s got support from the state government. The movement was formalized as Sardar Patel Sahkari Jal Sanchay Yojana (SPSJSY) soon after Narendra Modi assumed office as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Under this pan-Gujarat scheme, 5 lakh structures created (113738 check dams, 55917 bori bandhs, 240199 farm ponds, besides 62532 large and small check dams) making way for 808 MCM (Million Cubic Meter) of storage capacity. The scheme performed best in Saurashtra as almost 60 per cent of this storage capacity (482 MCM) confined in 7 districts of Saurashtra. The success of the program was much lauded by state and central governments making it exemplary for other semiarid regions like Marathawada and Vidarbha those that have comparable terrain, soil and aquifer characteristics. The comparative analysis of the movement's success with pre-post analysis by considering monsoonal groundwater recharge during good rainfall spell of 1975-84 (pre) and 2004-09 (post) show almost a two-fold increase in the groundwater recharge during the similar monsoon years in Saurashtra. This temporal analysis enables to establish the impact of the collective efforts by people as well as the government for groundwater rejuvenation in Saurashtra. With availability of dependable irrigation, Saurashtra has also emerged as a major contributor to Gujarat state's agriculture growth which has normally been shadowed by other regions of the state making the state agriculture growth reaching the double-digit figure.
2 Patel, Praharsh M.; Saha, D.; Shah, Tushaar. 2020. Sustainability of groundwater through community-driven distributed recharge: an analysis of arguments for water scarce regions of semi-arid India. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 29:100680. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2020.100680]
Groundwater recharge ; Aquifers ; Community involvement ; Sustainability ; Semiarid zones ; Impact assessment ; Groundwater table ; Groundwater extraction ; Water policy ; Water scarcity ; Irrigation ; Monsoon climate ; Rain / India / Gujarat / Maharashtra / Saurashtra / Marathawada / Vidarbha / Sardar Sarovar Project
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049712)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214581819302290/pdfft?md5=54ec1a9e7ec8a15a46c5464404b46f4a&pid=1-s2.0-S2214581819302290-main.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049712.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049712.pdf
(6.80 MB) (6.80 MB)
Study Region: Semi-Arid Regions of Marathawada, Vidarbha and Saurashtra in India
Study Focus: To understand and evaluate the impact of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) efforts.
New Hydrological Insights for the Region: Since 1990, the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, India witnessed a massive community-based distributed groundwater recharge movement, initially catalyzed by NGOs and later supported by the government. The region has witnessed visible improvement in groundwater resources during recent years, which was attributed by some researchers to the recharge movement. A competing hypothesis holds that improvement in groundwater levels in Saurashtra are a result more due to a succession of good rainfall years during 2001–2014, aided by transfer of surface water from a big dam on Narmada River, rather than the distributed recharge movement. We develop and implement a 2-way test of these competing hypotheses: First, we compare groundwater recharge patterns in Saurashtra during a recent period of high rainfall years with a similar period before the onset of the recharge movement; second, for both these high rainfall periods, we also compare groundwater recharge patterns in two other comparable aquifer and terrain regions, viz., Vidarbha and Marathawada in Maharastra, which did not experience recharge movement on the same scale as Saurashtra did. Our results support the hypothesis that the community supported distributed recharge movement is the key to improved groundwater recharge in Saurashtra during 2004-09.
Study Focus: To understand and evaluate the impact of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) efforts.
New Hydrological Insights for the Region: Since 1990, the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, India witnessed a massive community-based distributed groundwater recharge movement, initially catalyzed by NGOs and later supported by the government. The region has witnessed visible improvement in groundwater resources during recent years, which was attributed by some researchers to the recharge movement. A competing hypothesis holds that improvement in groundwater levels in Saurashtra are a result more due to a succession of good rainfall years during 2001–2014, aided by transfer of surface water from a big dam on Narmada River, rather than the distributed recharge movement. We develop and implement a 2-way test of these competing hypotheses: First, we compare groundwater recharge patterns in Saurashtra during a recent period of high rainfall years with a similar period before the onset of the recharge movement; second, for both these high rainfall periods, we also compare groundwater recharge patterns in two other comparable aquifer and terrain regions, viz., Vidarbha and Marathawada in Maharastra, which did not experience recharge movement on the same scale as Saurashtra did. Our results support the hypothesis that the community supported distributed recharge movement is the key to improved groundwater recharge in Saurashtra during 2004-09.
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