The water table in several districts of Punjab and Haryana has been showing a continuous declining trend in the last four decades. Alarmed over the fall in groundwater, many district administrations have put restrictions on the exploitation of groundwater and made the registration of new tubewells mandatory. The report of a survey conducted by the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI) paints a grim picture. It shows that the water table in fresh groundwater districts has been falling at between 0.8 metre and 1 metre every year in the last four decades. “A total of 55 blocks in Haryana and 103 in Punjab have been notified as overexploited groundwater areas and the level of groundwater is not up to the mark in several districts,” said Dr SK Kamra, head of the irrigation and drainage engineering division of the CSSRI. He said the most severely affected in terms of the falling water table were Kurukshetra, Karnal, Yamunanagar, Panipat, Jind and Kaithal in Haryana and Sangrur, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Patiala, Ludhiana, Moga, Fatehgarh Sahib and Amritsar in Punjab. In the remaining parts of the states, either groundwater availability was limited or groundwater quality was unfavourable, he added. “About two-thirds of Haryana, covering Rohtak, Sonepat, Bhiwani, Fatehabad and Hisar districts and parts of Sirsa, Palwal, Rewari, Jind and Kaithal, and one-third of Punjab, covering the south-western districts of Bathinda, Ferozepur, Faridkot and Muktsar, have saline groundwater,” said Dr Kamra. He added that climate change was increasing uncertainty of highly variable rainfall patterns, requiring greater efforts in managing both water scarcity and floods. Dr Kamra said 'sathi' rice was the main reason behind this. He said farmers were tempted to grow 'sathi' rice as it resembled 'basmati' in shape and matured only in 60 days. He said growing 1 kg of 'sathi' rice consumed about 4,000 litres of water. He said the area under rice cultivation should be reduced and farmers should shift from flood irrigation to underground piped water, drip and sprinkle irrigation to improve the water table.