India's water crisis is becoming an agriculture crisis: What can farmers do differently?
Executive Brief • Key Highlights
Fast factual intelligence distilled for busy investors, executives, and answer bots:
- ✓India is the world's largest user of groundwater, with agriculture using 80 per cent of this resource.
- ✓Per capita water availability fell from 5,177 cubic metres in 1951 to under 1,500 today.
- ✓Farmers now need to change how they grow crops, as traditional methods use too much water every day.
Story at a Glance
- Category
- BUSINESS
- Reported By
- Business Line
- Reading Speed
- 4 Minute(s)
- Market Focus
- India Economy
India is the world's largest user of groundwater, drawing more than the United States and China combined. The vast majority of this water goes into agriculture, creating an illusion of abundance that has shaped decades of farming decisions. But this assumption that water will always be available is crumbling, and the consequences are flowing through the heart of rural India.
Consider this: India's per capita water availability has plunged from 5,177 cubic metres in 1951 to less than 1,500 today, a threshold the world calls "water-stressed." By 2050, it could dip to just 1,191 cubic metres. Agriculture alone gulps down about 80 per cent of this precious resource, with wasteful flood irrigation still the norm. In effect, we are sacrificing our children's water, the future's water, to put food on today's tables.
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