Can artificial recharge of the ground water solve India's ground water crisis? To what extent? Discuss while enumerating various methods of artificially recharging the Ground Water.
Artificial recharge of the groundwater can solve the issue substantially but not completely because of very high rate of groundwater exploitation. This method can solve the crisis in two types of the areas.
Areas with high rainfall but the high water runoff due to deforestation or urbanization
Cities such as Mumbai and certain areas such as southern part of Tamil Nadu receives high monsoon rainfall but still has low underground water table due to surface runoff of rain water. In such areas artificial recharge methods such as “Ditch and Furrow system”, “Stream Augmentation”, “Over irrigation” can be deployed where the rain water is to made spread over land for long period of time so that the water could percolate in to ground. “Roof top rain water harvesting” methods can also be deployed specially in metro cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, where the run off occurs due construction of road and buildings which prevent water from percolating into ground.
Areas with low rainfall
Certain semi arid areas such as Gujarat and Rajasthan where rainfall is low and ground water is major source during dry period. In such areas methods such as “Recharge well, Recharge pit/shaft, Dug well” can be deployed where a pit or well is digged and rainwater is channelized in to it, so that water could percolate in to ground.
Topics: GS-III: Different Types of Irrigation and Irrigation Systems