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.
This area pumps out more water than rain puts back. 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 42 points since 2017.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 112.0% | 314 million m³ | 280 million m³ | Over-exploited | First assessment in this series. |
| 2013 | 92.0% | 283 million m³ | 310 million m³ | Critical | Pumping down 10% (314 → 283 million m³). Safe limit up 11% (280 → 310 million m³). Main reason: less water was pumped out, mostly for irrigation (313 → 272 million m³). |
| 2017 | 91.3% | 351 million m³ | 384 million m³ | Critical | Pumping up 24% (283 → 351 million m³). Safe limit up 24% (310 → 384 million m³). CGWB changed its method in 2017 (GEC-97 to GEC-2015), so part of this change comes from the new method. |
| 2020 | 126.9% | 353 million m³ | 278 million m³ | Over-exploited | Pumping up 1% (351 → 353 million m³). Safe limit down 28% (384 → 278 million m³). Main reason: less water soaked back in, from weaker rain, less canal seepage or more paved ground. |
| 2022 | 132.3% | 353 million m³ | 267 million m³ | Over-exploited | Pumping up 0% (353 → 353 million m³). Safe limit down 4% (278 → 267 million m³). Main reason: less water soaked back in, from weaker rain, less canal seepage or more paved ground. |
| 2023 | 132.8% | 351 million m³ | 264 million m³ | Over-exploited | Pumping down 1% (353 → 351 million m³). Safe limit down 1% (267 → 264 million m³). |
| 2024 | 132.7% | 350 million m³ | 264 million m³ | Over-exploited | Pumping down 0% (351 → 350 million m³). Safe limit down 0% (264 → 264 million m³). |
| 2025 | 133.2% | 353 million m³ | 265 million m³ | Over-exploited | Pumping up 1% (350 → 353 million m³). Safe limit up 0% (264 → 265 million m³). |
Million m³: 1 million m³ = 100 crore litres. 2009 and 2013 used the older GEC-97 method.
Loading 20 years of rainfall…
50 of 771 water bodies (6%) are not in use: dried up, silted, built over or polluted. Bringing them back is one of the cheapest ways to recharge groundwater.
Loading the map of water bodies in Rewari…
Source: 1st Census of Water Bodies, Ministry of Jal Shakti (counted in 2018-19, published 2023).
Haryana mapped its ponds from satellite images in 2023, so its count differs from the census, which recorded water bodies on the ground in 2018-19. It also counts the tube wells that pump groundwater for irrigation.
Source: Haryana Water Resources Atlas 2025, Haryana Water Resources Authority. Ponds and water bodies mapped from satellite data in 2023 (Pond Authority Haryana, HARSAC); irrigation tube wells counted in 2022-23 (Ground Water Cell, Haryana).
Most of the water here goes to farming, so using less on fields matters as much as recharge.
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.
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.
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.
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, Rewari (Haryana) pumped out 133% of the groundwater that can be safely taken out each year, which puts it in the "over-exploited" category. That is 42 points higher than in 2017.
Yes. Rewari takes out more groundwater than rain and other sources put back, so the water table keeps falling.
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.
The Haryana Water Resources Atlas 2025 counts 13,942 tube wells used for irrigation in Rewari district (2022-23).
The first Census of Water Bodies counted 771 water bodies in Rewari, including 762 ponds. 50 of them were not in use.
Yearly rain at Rewari, 2006–2025, from NASA satellite data. Lighter bars are dry years (20% or more below average), when wells are drawn hardest.
To stop the water table falling, Rewari has to put back or save 87.9 million m³ a year. At 675 mm of rain, here is what that looks like:
In practice it is a mix: recharge in towns, ponds and check dams in villages, and saving water on farms and in factories.
1 mm of rain on 1 m² is 1 litre. The surface factor allows for water lost to splash, evaporation and first-flush.