Public Provision and Protection of Natural Resources: Groundwater Irrigation in Rural India

Groundwater irrigation has been instrumental in enhancing food security and, arguably, in mitigating poverty in developing countries. Groundwater provides timely irrigation, leading to an increase in crop intensity and productivity (Food and Agriculture Organization 2003). But groundwater irrigation also contributes the most to the depletion of groundwater reserves. Countries with significant groundwater-irrigated areas, including Mexico, the United States, Yemen, Pakistan, India, and China, are experiencing substantial declines in their water-tables due to overexploitation of groundwater reserves. This paper examines the economic underpinnings of the trade-off between increasing access to groundwater and sustaining reserves of groundwater in India. Rural India is a pertinent and important setting to study how resource-intensive development schemes affect the stock of resources, particularly groundwater. As in many other countries, water tables in India are declining. Fifteen percent of the administrative blocks in India are considered overexploited (Central Groundwater