Switch thirsty crops, water by drip
Where most water goes to fields, moving from paddy and sugarcane to millets, pulses or maize, and from flood to drip or sprinkler irrigation, saves more than any recharge can add.
Groundwater use is within safe limits here. That is the 2025 stage of groundwater extraction: water pumped out in a year as a share of what rain and other sources safely put back. Up 3 points since 2022.
Each point is one CGWB assessment. Over-exploited means more water leaves the ground than comes back, so the water table keeps falling. Hover over or tap a point to see why it moved.
| Year | Stage | Pumped out | Safe limit | Category | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 37.7% | – | – | Safe | First assessment in this series. |
| 2024 | 39.4% | 51.7 million m³ | 131 million m³ | Safe | Little change since 2022 (+1.8 points). |
| 2025 | 41.2% | 52.7 million m³ | 128 million m³ | Safe | Pumping up 2% (52 → 53 million m³). Safe limit down 2% (131 → 128 million m³). |
Million m³: 1 million m³ = 100 crore litres. 2009 and 2013 used the older GEC-97 method.
Rainfall data is unavailable right now, so estimates on this page assume 700 mm a year.
Groundwater here is in balance. Keeping it that way means recharging as the area builds up and paves over.
Where most water goes to fields, moving from paddy and sugarcane to millets, pulses or maize, and from flood to drip or sprinkler irrigation, saves more than any recharge can add.
Desilting old ponds and opening their feeder channels restores natural recharge. A one-hectare pond that soaks in a metre of water over the monsoon puts back about a crore litres.
Pipe roof water through a silt trap and filter into a recharge pit or an old borewell. Every 100 m² of roof puts back tens of thousands of litres a year, right where the pumping happens.
Parks, campuses, warehouse yards and road sides can take recharge shafts that reach past the clay layer, so runoff that floods streets goes down to the aquifer instead.
On sloping or rocky land, small dams on seasonal streams and trenches along contours slow water down long enough for it to sink in.
Treated water from a sewage treatment plant can run flushing, gardens, cooling towers and construction, which today often draw on borewells.
In the 2025 Central Ground Water Board assessment, Gourela-Pendra-Marwahi (Chhattisgarh) pumped out 41% of the groundwater that can be safely taken out each year, which puts it in the "safe" category. That is 3 points higher than in 2022.
No. At 41% of the safe yield, Gourela-Pendra-Marwahi is safe, though recharge is still needed as demand grows.
Rooftop rainwater harvesting into recharge pits or old borewells, recharge shafts in open land, reviving ponds, check dams, treating and reusing wastewater, and moving farms to drip irrigation and less thirsty crops.