Not Grounded in Reality

Context: Industry associations have recently approached the Jal Shakti Ministry against National Green Tribunal (NGT) order for providing no objection certificates (NOCs) for groundwater withdrawal.

NGT’s Order 

• Permission for groundwater withdrawal : must be based on study of availability of groundwater and periodic report on replenishment of groundwater.

• Flaws in NGT order:

• Groundwater levels also depend on seasonality, rainfall, digging activity in upstream areas, etc.
• Unit-specific study before imposing the order: is a time taking process.

• Economic ramifications: Adversely affecting industries that require groundwater in terms of jobs, incomes and livelihoods. 

Problems in Groundwater Withdrawal Policy

• Monitoring groundwater withdrawal: usually hidden from public view, and use of pumps can easily extract more than permitted. 

• Technology-enabled monitoring requires frequent human visits to such units, that allows units to change the system in their favour.

• Limited capacity of CGWA: i.e inadequacy of technocracy is due to factors like

• Institutional design fails to meet the challenges of a rapidly degenerating environment and a growing economy.
• Financial allocations are lower than large monitoring and enforcement capabilities. 
• Limited responsibilities and accountability assigned to those in the technocratic set-up.

NGT’s Failure

• Principle of proportionality:  Good groundwater practices by industry are important, but will not solve the groundwater problem.
• Industry’s share in groundwater extraction is less than 1% of the total.
• Principle of accountability: NGT order stops operations of large, medium and small units irrespective of their compliance with the law.

Conclusion: A better NGT order would have directed the Ministry and CGWA to be better resourced and more accountable by 

• Increasing the ability to catch and impose fines on erring units
• Asking them to study monitoring and enforcement mechanism of other countries