While green revolution policies transformed Haryana into a granary of the nation, the shift to water-intensive crops and the year-round supply from the Western Yamuna Canal raised water tables far beyond their natural levels. Across central Haryana, the consequences varied by district, shaped by local soil profiles, aquifer behaviour, and the mix of canal and tubewell irrigation. In the Rohtak and Jhajjar belt in particular, poorly drained alluvial soils, continuous flooding of fields for paddy, and the absence of adequate sub-surface drainage produced a distinctive ecological trap. Here, shallow water tables and the capillary rise of saline water have created a persistent layer of salinity just below the surface, degrading the soil and making diversification extremely difficult.
A map at the Primary Health Centre in Bhalaut, catering to the villages of Rohtak district, places it among nineteen neighbouring settlements: Pakasma and Baliyana to the south, Bohar to the west, Kiloi Khas and Rurki to the north, and Assan to the east—each roughly the same or larger in size. Walking through our ancestral village of Bhalaut with my father, he recalled how, in his youth in the 1970s, it was proudly counted among the bawani villages, large landholding settlements where bawan, or fifty two, symbolised approximately fifty two thousand bighas, or about ten thousand acres of land. Bhalaut, once central in this constellation of villages, carried the weight of such prosperity and scale in its very name and identity.
That legacy has thinned. Today, local Jat landholders point to the increasing spread of keekar (Prosopis juliflora), a thorny shrub debated by ecologists for its invasiveness as well as its potential benefits to degraded soils. In the village, however, the meaning is unequivocal. People say, “Wherever you see keekar grow, you should take it as a sign that the land will be sold soon.” For them, the shrub does not only mark decline; it signals land slipping out of cultivation and moving into the market, particularly in anticipation of industrial expansion such as the Maruti Research and Development Facility or infrastructure projects like the newly built Jammu–Katra highway. Elders lament that nearly thirty percent of agricultural land has fallen out of cultivation, rendered uncultivable by waterlogging and salinity. Farming continues, but its generative force is weaker, marked by fields slowly slipping out of use.
Spatial data from the Haryana Water Resource Atlas corroborate these observations. The maps reveal concentrated clusters of waterlogged villages in central Rohtak, Jhajjar, Charkhi Dadri, and Bhiwani that overlap with medium to high salinity zones. Unlike districts in southern and eastern Haryana, where groundwater levels have sharply declined by 8 to 20 metres between 2000 and 2020 because of over-extraction, Rohtak shows stable to slightly rising water tables in many blocks due to canal irrigation recharge and the absence of adequate drainage. As a result, the problem here is not scarcity but salinity accumulation. Shallow groundwater interacts with clayey soils and brings salts upward, degrading soil fertility. This creates a different kind of management challenge. Farmers must know their water, not only its quantity but its quality, how it moves, how it alters the soil, and what kinds of mitigation measures can be brought to the fore.
Looking at Bhalaut as a microcosm of central Haryana, one witnesses a story of slow agricultural erosion: not a sudden collapse, but gradual abandonment, with cultivators contending daily with soils that yield less and fields increasingly lying fallow. While catastrophic events such as the devastating floods that began in late August 2025 in Punjab demand immediate attention and compensation, what equally warrants concern at the level of policy and practice is the less visible, yet no less consequential, depletion occurring beneath the surface. It is in this double register, the sudden and the slow, that water emerges as a significant broker of both risk and possibility. Focusing on Bhalaut shows what life above feels like when the ground beneath is recognised as a living entity with its own movements and science, calling for research-driven policy grounded in local lived experience, the possibilities of replenishment, and knowledge cultures that respond to local concerns while keeping the science of the soil in view.
Choosing paddy, or left with no choice?
Being in Bhalaut especially in the rain-intensive month of August, one sees a slow erosion of agricultural possibilities especially as fields lie increasingly waterlogged. Former Sarpanch Daljit (85) and his contemporaries recall, “The land has lost its ability to absorb water. Mahavir, a 45-year-old farmer who recently shifted from paddy to fish farming, describes a paradox: “Water is scarce when sowing should begin, yet even moderate rainfall later triggers a sudden rise in the chawa, which is the subsurface water level, submerging crops.”
Narender (48), who holds 3.5 acres, recalls that before 1994–95, crops such as arhar (pigeon pea), sugarcane, and cotton were common kharif crops, needing only periodic irrigation. “With too much water, even the taste of the crops changed,” he reflects. Over the past two decades, kharif dhaan (paddy) has become dominant—first because it tolerates excess water, second because it ensures a ready market, unlike other failing crops. Attempts to grow cotton or other less water-intensive crops have repeatedly failed as rising groundwater and salinity destroy yields.
Ram Kishan, a farmer in his late seventies, recalls an even more diverse past: he used to plant gram (chana) as a rabi crop, viable only when the chawa remained at least six feet below the surface. He distinguishes between bairani kheti (rainfed farming) and sinchit kheti (irrigated farming), noting a time when cropping practices were diverse and soils were healthier.
Today, even farmers experimenting with organic vegetable cultivation struggle. Dr Virender Singh (69) and Suresh Singh (67), running a subscription-based vegetable enterprise, describe July and August as transition months, when rising chawa brings water and salt to the surface, jeopardising remaining crops and disrupting sowing schedules.
Vicky (38), managing nearly twenty acres, underscores the scale of change: sugarcane and cotton, once common, are now nearly impossible to grow. Saline soils make vegetable cultivation unfeasible, and leaving fields uncultivated does not restore soil health. “Many fields will simply have to be abandoned. Orchards, once common, wither as waterlogging rises: “first a hundred trees, then fifty, as roots die in saturated soil.” Vicky estimates that 150–200 acres in the area have already turned unproductive. The distress is palpable: “If a buyer comes at night, people will not wait till morning to sell their land.”
The science beneath our feet : Understanding Rohtak’s sub-surface and green water
Farmers in Rohtak often describe the land as swollen with water that refuses to drain. What they experience as waterlogging and soil decline is bound up with the particular hydrogeology of central Haryana, where the ground is both a gift and a trap. Farmers themselves offered a common-sense reading of this topography. They imagine Haryana’s subsurface as a bowl —Rohtak and its surrounds lying at the base, while Panchkula to the north-west and Rewari and Mahendergarh to the south-east sit on relatively higher ground. The central region’s flat plains, with only gentle slopes, allow rainwater and canal flows to percolate underground and form shallow water tables. Unlike the sandy, better-drained south-west (in districts such as Sirsa and Fatehabad), the central plains sit atop fine alluvial deposits of the old Yamuna–Ghaggar system. These fine soils and weathered rocks act like a sponge, holding water close to the surface and making groundwater here far more immediate than in other parts of the state.
With his specialisation in soil science and agronomy, and as a former advisor on climate change to the Haryana Department of Environment and Climate Change, Dr K. C. Banger explains that in areas with very shallow water tables, sometimes only a few feet below the ground, salts from underground water are drawn upward through the soil profile. Two natural processes accentuate this condition. The first is evapotranspiration, the loss of water from soil and plants into the air, which is especially strong during the summer heat. The second is capillary action, in which water creeps upward through fine clay pores, much like it rises in a thin straw. With the onset of the monsoon, poorly drained plains witness an elevation in the chawa, or water level, which farmers describe as fields lying waterlogged. Each cycle of wetting and drying leaves behind residues of salt, gradually transforming once-fertile soils into saline or sodic tracts, depending on the minerals present.
Irrigation can worsen this condition, especially when groundwater itself is saline, yet it is only one part of the story. It prompts the larger question of why and how a crop so ill-suited to this ecology came to be promoted here in the first place. The broader hydrogeological dynamics of shallow aquifers and fine-textured soils remain the considerable characters in the story, demanding critical attention. Shallow aquifers, generally within 20 metres of the surface, are accessed through tube wells, which are productive but susceptible to waterlogging when recharge is high. Deeper aquifers exist between 27 and 52 metres but are used less frequently because water salinity increases with depth. Bedrock lies much deeper, around 370 metres. The alluvial sediments are dominated by clay, with intermittent sand and gravel layers. This limited permeability, combined with flat terrain, slows drainage and allows water to accumulate near the surface, aggravating waterlogging and salinity.
Similar processes are visible beyond Haryana. In south-west Punjab, in districts such as Muktsar, Fazilka, Faridkot, Bathinda, Mansa, and Sangrur, the combination of canal seepage, shallow aquifers, and paddy cultivation has produced widespread waterlogging and secondary salinisation. Here, the problem is not only an excess of blue water, the canal and groundwater that saturates fields, but also the collapse of green water, the soil moisture on which crops depend. When soils remain flooded or turn saline, they can no longer absorb, store, or cycle green water effectively, creating a deeper agricultural fragility. Rohtak aligns more closely with the south-west Punjab story, marked by the persistence of shallow water tables that make the land feel perennially “swollen”, but with its own hydrogeological signature shaped by the Yamuna–Ghaggar alluvium.
Piped, pulled, and brokered: Making water work
The lack of absorption of water is one part of the problem; the other is bringing water from elsewhere when the ground beneath does not cooperate. Farmers must choreograph its journey with energy, skill, and social coordination—rewiring canals, diverting flows, and piping freshwater across fields to keep crops alive. Securing a steady supply becomes part engineering, part labour, and part negotiation, mapped with the precision of a cartographer and the improvisation of a street magician.
Yet government support often assumes a simpler solution. Haryana’s schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) and the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) offer subsidies for shrimp or prawn cultivation in saline areas, aiming to convert lavanya zameen (salt affected land) into profitable aquaculture zones. While these incentives promise financial assistance, nascent farmers like Mahavir find such ventures risky: initial investments are high, landholdings are limited, technical demands are complex, and market access is uncertain.
On his four-acre land, Mahavir has opted for freshwater carps such as Rohu and Katla for three years as he foresees higher input costs, cultivation and market risks for the crustaceans. Yet the water-intensive nature of this enterprise quickly becomes apparent. Freshwater is essential to sustain plankton and manage seasonal fluctuations in ammonia. To meet this demand, Mahavir has established a buried network: a pipeline stretching two kilometres from land he purchased, ensuring a steady supply of reliable freshwater to his ponds.
For many farmers whose fields lie away from canals, agriculture is possible only if they can secure a water line from a tubewell or canal. This constantly moving infrastructure sustains both irrigation and drinking water for the village, forming a negotiated system of life and cultivation.
Location is everything. Lands closer to canals are considered superior: the water is sweeter, easier to manage, and more productive. Locals navigate the terrain through hyperlocal spatial landmarks: near a primary school bordering Pakasma village, water is extremely saline, while fields nearer the canal are much fresher. Canal water naturally seeps into the surrounding soil, recharging shallow aquifers and diluting salts, producing fresher groundwater for nearby lands. Yet farming in this ecology remains resource- and labour-intensive. Some farmers practise bharat karna, raising their bed levels with alluvial soil mixed with balu ret (coarse sand), giving crops a better chance of growth. These makeshift interventions reveal not only the absence of formal infrastructure but also the reality that farmers are forced to improvise when no other support exists.
Such makeshift interventions reflect both the absence of formal infrastructure and a tacit acceptance of local fixes.
Farmers know these makeshift fixes are fragile. They patch what they can, aware that the repairs may not last the season. In village after village, water ends up deciding the future, whether fields remain cultivable for the next generation or whether families give in to rising land prices and the pressure to sell. Even so, the act of trying to fix the problem matters. It shows that farmers have not given up, that they still see a chance, however slim, for the land to hold. So what do they think a real solution looks like? And what futures are they trying to secure amid the uncertainty?
Breaking the chawa: Farmers ask for basics
Across conversations in Bhalaut, one demand comes up repeatedly: to “break the chawa”, the water that steadily rises from below and has grown more saline over the years. Mahavir explains it plainly: “The water below does not escape. The chawa has surfaced, sometimes even above the land. Either install enough tubewells so the water keeps moving or lay proper drains. Until the chawa is broken and this stagnant water is carried out through deep, open drains (bidroh), little is likely to improve.”
In Bhalaut, farmers do not shy away from spelling out what they need from the state, yet this sits alongside a long-standing sense of being uncared for and a growing weariness with agriculture itself. They talk about public works built at a collective scale, systems capable of moving water across fields, villages, and entire drainsheds in a way that individual landholders cannot manage. The principle is straightforward enough: puncture the ground deep enough, pull out the stagnant saline water, and create channels that allow it to drain. If the water recedes, the soil may recover and farming can move beyond survival. In practice, though, families end up carrying much of the burden themselves. Drilling bores, installing pumps, and draining “bad water” demand money and electricity that only the largeholding farmers can sustain. True relief would require infrastructure planned and executed at the scale of the landscape, not piecemeal tubewells or half-complete schemes.
This gap between what farmers ask for and what the state provides becomes sharper when one sees how policies reach the ground. The state’s engagement is routed largely through incentivisation. Schemes such as Mera Pani Meri Virasat reward farmers with INR 7000 per acre for shifting from paddy to maize, cotton, pulses, or horticulture, even on fallow land. Yet when farmers speak of breaking the chawa, they are not asking merely for crop substitution. They are asking for conditions that give them more agency, with diversification and alternative crops being one possible route.
Farmers’ ideas may demand technical scrutiny and significant effort, but they are not borne out of thin air. In the aftermath of the deluge in north-west India this August, a delegation from Meham (a subdivision of villages in Rohtak district) pressed for familiar measures: motors to pump out water, the opening of the e-Kshatipurti portal, and compensation for crop loss. The farmers of Bhalaut, though not as badly hit by the rains, are already grappling with water that lies trapped beneath the surface, killing crops and foreclosing possibilities. If farming is barely viable in ordinary times, then the crisis—though intensified by heavy rainfall—only magnifies the very conditions that enable it. The plea to break the chawa is a recognition that the subsurface is slipping beyond human control and that a regenerative balance must be rebuilt for restoring the ecological foundations that make cultivation possible. Until then, the paddy–wheat rotation remains the default here, not because it is ideal, but because it’s the only combination that still works under the prevailing waterlogged–saline conditions. Wheat tolerates moderate salinity and residual moisture better than most alternatives.
What farmers are pointing towards, then, is not merely the need to sow differently, but the repair and recovery of the ground on which any future harvest depends. The solution does not lie in switching crops alone, but in restoring soils and water pathways so that choice itself can exist. This is where a deeper challenge emerges. The absence of regenerative planning has created an epistemic harm, evident not only in gaps in understanding salinity, but in how knowledge fails to become consequential. What is missing in state policy and programmes is a collaborative framework in which ecologists, soil scientists, hydrologists, and on-ground advisory systems work with farmers to understand salinity, map the collapse of green water, and support the slow work of soil and water recovery.
The farmers often perceived as “notorious for paddy” are, in fact, extending their thinking to the scale of properly engineered bidroh (drainage) channels built with gradients that move water rather than post-crisis clearance. In doing so, they are thinking in systems, not just in crops or individual plots. They understand that drainage is the minimum ecological infrastructure on which any future can stand. Only once fields can drain can they begin to chart a path towards restorative agrarian change. The question that follows is whether the state and its advisories can meet this system's thinking, and whose responsibility it is to ensure that better choices become possible at all.
This story is produced as part of the India Water Portal Regional Story Fellowship 2025.