New Delhi: Across India’s major cities, the water crisis is no longer confined to what can be seen on the surface. Cities are expanding rapidly, paved areas are replacing open land, natural drains and water bodies are under pressure, and groundwater is being drawn to meet the needs of homes, businesses and industry. In several urban centres, official groundwater assessments now show extraction at or close to levels that raise serious questions about long-term availability.
Gurugram offers one of the clearest examples.
A recent report submitted by the Central Ground Water Authority to the Punjab and Haryana High Court found that groundwater levels had declined at six of seven urban monitoring locations in the city. At Kherki Daula, the groundwater level was recorded at 50.30 metres below ground level. Several other monitoring points also recorded depths exceeding 20 metres.
At the same time, Gurugram continues to face severe waterlogging during heavy rainfall.
The two problems may appear unrelated. They are not.
A city can receive substantial rainfall and still fail to replenish its groundwater if rainwater runs quickly over concrete and asphalt into storm drains instead of entering the soil. Rapid construction, reduced open spaces, altered drainage patterns and the loss of natural water bodies can change how rainfall moves through an urban area.
The result is a peculiar urban equation: water accumulates where it is not wanted and disappears from the underground reserves where it is needed.
The national picture
The latest national groundwater assessment provides the broader context.
According to the 2025 assessment, India’s annual groundwater recharge was estimated at 448.52 billion cubic metres (BCM), while annual extractable groundwater resources were put at 407.75 BCM. Total groundwater extraction was estimated at 247.22 BCM, giving the country an overall stage of groundwater extraction of 60.63 per cent.
The national figure, however, does not tell the whole story.
The assessment identified 730 of 6,762 assessment units as over-exploited. Another 201 were classified as critical and 758 as semi-critical. An assessment unit can be a block, mandal, taluk, watershed or other administrative or hydrogeological unit, depending on the state.
The government has reported an improvement in the national picture over recent years, with the proportion of safe assessment units rising and the share of over-exploited units falling. But groundwater is a local resource. A national average can improve while particular cities or aquifers continue to deteriorate.
That is precisely why urban groundwater needs to be examined separately.
Delhi’s warning
Delhi’s groundwater figures illustrate the pressure in a densely populated metropolitan region.
The Central Ground Water Board’s 2023 assessment put the overall stage of groundwater extraction in the National Capital Territory at 99 per cent. Of the 34 assessment units examined, 13 were classified as over-exploited, 12 as critical, four as semi-critical and five as safe.
Vasant Vihar recorded an extraction stage of 153 per cent.
The classification does not mean that groundwater will suddenly disappear from these areas. It means the assessed extraction is beyond the level considered sustainable under the groundwater-resource assessment.
That distinction is important. Groundwater depletion is generally gradual. Wells may continue to produce water for years even as the underlying resource is being drawn down.
By the time a borewell stops yielding water, the deterioration may already have been taking place for a long period.
Chennai: the pressure beneath individual neighbourhoods
Chennai presents another example of how national and city-level averages can hide local stress.
The 2024 groundwater assessment for Tamil Nadu identified several Chennai assessment units where groundwater extraction exceeded the annual replenishable resource.
Mylapore (South) recorded an extraction stage of 147.60 per cent, Royapuram 151.66 per cent, Manali 136.46 per cent and Kodungaiyur 136.07 per cent. Maduravoyal was also recorded at 149.71 per cent.
For a city dependent on a combination of reservoirs, groundwater, desalination and other sources, these figures raise a wider planning issue.
How much groundwater can an expanding neighbourhood continue to draw?
And what happens to recharge when the same neighbourhood becomes increasingly built up?
Bengaluru’s changing surface
Research on Bengaluru helps explain the connection between urbanisation, flooding and groundwater.
A 2026 peer-reviewed study examining changes over roughly two decades found that the city’s built-up area had increased from 42 per cent to 86 per cent. The researchers examined the relationship between urban expansion, flooding and groundwater recharge and linked the growth of impervious surfaces with changes in runoff and infiltration.
The significance is not that every built-up area automatically causes groundwater depletion. Urban development can be planned with drainage and recharge measures.
The problem arises when natural surfaces and water systems are replaced faster than the city creates effective alternatives.
A lake, wetland, open ground or drainage corridor is part of the movement of water through a city. Remove one element and the effect may be felt elsewhere.
A storm drain can move rainwater away quickly. It cannot, by itself, replace the groundwater recharge function of an entire catchment.
The cost of paving over recharge areas
The change in land use is therefore central to the groundwater question.
Research from different parts of India has found links between expanding built-up areas, increased runoff and reduced groundwater recharge. A study of the Chaliyar basin in Kerala, for instance, found a substantial increase in built-up land between 2002 and 2022 and reported a decline in estimated groundwater recharge alongside increased surface runoff.
The findings from one basin cannot be applied directly to every Indian city. But the underlying issue is common: the more land that is sealed by buildings and paved surfaces, the less opportunity there is for rainfall to infiltrate naturally.
That is where urban planning and groundwater management meet.
The question is not simply how much rain a city receives.
It is how much of that rain remains within the local water system.
What about Hyderabad?
Hyderabad deserves particular attention because the city and its surrounding urban region have expanded rapidly over the past two decades.
The Central Ground Water Board’s 2023 assessment placed Hyderabad’s stage of groundwater extraction at 94 per cent. Telangana’s assessment identified over-exploited, critical and semi-critical groundwater units across the state.
The numbers warrant closer examination at the local level.
Which parts of Hyderabad are drawing groundwater fastest? Where have water levels fallen consistently? Which lakes and open areas continue to function as recharge zones? How much construction has taken place over natural drainage channels or catchments? And, importantly, are mandated rainwater-harvesting and recharge structures actually working?
Those questions cannot be answered by looking only at rainfall figures.
They require groundwater-level records, land-use maps, building permissions, lake and waterbody records and data from individual monitoring wells.
That is where the next phase of the investigation should go.
The waterbody question
India’s first nationwide Waterbody Census also provides an important piece of the picture.
Urban water bodies are not merely storage areas or public spaces. Their catchments, feeder channels and surrounding land can influence drainage and groundwater recharge. Government and urban-planning institutions have repeatedly identified encroachment, pollution, land-use change and poor maintenance as threats to urban water bodies.
When a lake becomes smaller, a feeder channel is blocked or an open recharge area is built over, the effect may not immediately appear as a groundwater statistic.
It may appear first as flooding.
Later, it may appear as a falling water table.
Eventually, it may appear as a neighbourhood becoming increasingly dependent on tankers or deeper borewells.
These are not always separate problems.
The question of extraction
There is another side to the equation that receives less attention: how much groundwater cities are actually extracting.
India’s groundwater assessment system now provides annual estimates of recharge, extractable resources and extraction. But the real challenge lies in translating those numbers into local regulation.
A city may know that an aquifer is stressed. That does not automatically mean every borewell is monitored or every extraction point is metered.
Commercial establishments, construction sites, industries, apartment complexes and individual households may all draw water through different arrangements. The extent of monitoring varies between jurisdictions.
This creates a basic governance problem.
If a city does not know precisely how much groundwater is being extracted from a stressed aquifer, it cannot reliably manage that aquifer.
Rainwater harvesting has a role, but it cannot be treated as a substitute for regulating extraction.
Recharge structures can add water to the ground where local geology permits it. They cannot make an aquifer sustainable if extraction continues to exceed replenishment.
The contradiction India needs to confront
The groundwater story is therefore more complicated than a simple shortage of rain.
India receives substantial rainfall, but much of it is seasonal and unevenly distributed. Cities then alter the natural movement of that water through construction, roads, drains, lakes, reservoirs and pumping.
Gurugram’s falling groundwater levels alongside repeated waterlogging make the contradiction visible.
Delhi’s near-100 per cent extraction stage shows the pressure in a major urban region.
Chennai’s over-exploited assessment units demonstrate how severe the problem can become at the neighbourhood level.
Bengaluru’s changing land cover shows how urban expansion can affect the relationship between rainfall, runoff and recharge.
Hyderabad’s groundwater figures suggest that the issue is not remote from Telangana either.
The important question now is not whether India needs more water.
It is whether its cities are managing the water they already receive.
For years, urban development has largely measured growth in terms of roads built, houses constructed, commercial space added and land converted. Groundwater rarely appears in the same visible balance sheet.
But the underground resource has its own accounting.
Every borewell takes water out. Every paved surface changes how rain gets back in. And every lost lake or recharge area changes the balance.
The water crisis beneath India’s cities may not become visible all at once. It is being recorded, well by well, year by year, in groundwater measurements that are already available.
The deeper question is whether urban planning is moving quickly enough to respond to them.
