What happens when the wells run dry, but the bills keep piling up? In Karnataka’s Bengaluru Rural district, the Gram Panchayats of Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru are caught in exactly this bind. With every passing year, they are spending more just to keep the taps running, drilling deeper borewells, paying higher electricity bills, and sinking further into debt. The costs of maintaining a basic drinking water supply are soaring, and the reasons lie deep underground.
We know that groundwater overuse is one of the biggest threats to rural drinking water in India. Yet, surprisingly, there are very few studies that actually show in numbers how fast water levels in aquifers are falling, how local water supply systems are coping, and what it really costs communities to chase water deeper and deeper underground. This lack of evidence is especially serious in hard rock regions of peninsular India where risks to rural water security remain poorly understood.
The challenge is particularly relevant today as India races to meet the ambitious goal of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) like providing piped and safe drinking water to every household in India by 2024. JJM funds new borewells when old ones fail, but crucially, it does not cover the day-to-day operation and maintenance costs that are now spiraling out of control for local governments.
This study titled ‘Chasing the water table: The impact of groundwater depletion on rural drinking water supply in peninsular India’ published in PLOS WATER is authored by Veena Srinivasan, Lakshmikantha NR, Manjunatha and Ganesh Nagnath Shinde. It aims at understanding how groundwater depletion impacts rural water supply in peninsular India. Drawing on detailed field data from Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru Gram Panchayats in the Aralumallige subwatershed in Bengaluru rural district in Karnataka, the study asks three tough but important questions:
How far has groundwater really fallen, and how is this affecting drinking water borewells?
What is driving this depletion?
And what are the extra costs, both for drilling new wells and for pumping from ever-greater depths, that local Panchayats and consumers are forced to bear?
The answers paint a sobering picture of rural water supply caught in a costly cycle of debt and depletion.
Groundwater in the Aralumallige sub-watershed has been drying up since the 1990s. Farmers who once relied on shallow wells are now forced to drill deep borewells, but even then, water is hard to find. Irrigation has become a privilege only for those who can afford these costly wells, while others are left behind. As water levels continue to fall, farmers compete by drilling deeper and chasing a water table that keeps slipping away.
Multiple agencies are responsible for drinking water supply in the region. The Zilla Panchayat made up of around 150 to 200 Gram Panchayats in Karnataka, operates at the district level and is responsible for allocating funds for capital expenditure, award tenders for the installation of borewells and conveyance infrastructure, find contractors to do the work and hand over the finished system to the Gram Panchayat, made up of three to ten revenue villages.
The Gram Panchayat manages and maintains the water supply system. Each Gram Panchayat receives some funding from the central government’s 15th Finance Commission Fund as well as from the state government through the “Shasana Badda Anudhana” scheme for public services. Additionally, each Gram Panchayat also decides and collects property tax and applicable tariffs as utility revenue from households.
Water supply in the Aralumallige subwatershed has gone through a dramatic transformation over the last few decades. In the early days, people depended on handpumps and shallow dugwells. Those without their own wells often walked kilometres to fetch water. By the 1970s, however, private borewells for irrigation began to appear, and with the introduction of free electricity for farmers in the early 1980s, borewells spread rapidly.
By the 1990s, the shallow aquifer had been completely exhausted, forcing Gram Panchayats to drill their own borewells to provide water through public standpipes. After 2005, investments shifted to piped water networks and household connections. Today, under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), these networks are being expanded further, with a new benchmark of 55 litres per person per day.
The study tracked functional and abandoned borewells over time to understand how groundwater depletion is reshaping rural drinking water supply. The picture is sobering. Private irrigation wells and Panchayat drinking water wells are locked in competition. There are nearly five times more private irrigation borewells than Panchayat wells, and both have gone progressively deeper over the years. Initially, only private wells were deeper, but since 2000, Gram Panchayats too have been forced to drill further down as water tables fell.
Despite these efforts, failure rates are staggering. Over half of all wells drilled have failed; for drinking water borewells, the figure is nearly 70 percent within just a decade of installation. And yet, irrigation continues to expand. Between 2010 and 2020, irrigated land increased even as wells kept failing. Withdrawals for irrigation are still 10–20 times higher than domestic withdrawals, and total extractions far exceed what rainfall recharge can provide. In fact, with just a quarter of cropland under irrigation, the aquifer is already overexploited—raising serious concerns for both farming and drinking water security.
In Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru, keeping the taps running has become an expensive and exhausting race against a falling water table. Borewell drilling is no longer able to keep pace with the growing demand for water and the constant replacement of failed wells.
As authors state, “ Forty one new borewells were drilled and 30 wells failed, leaving 34 functioning borewells at the end of 2021. The total cost of drilling the 41 new borewells for both Gram Panchayats between 2011 and 2021 was $US 269,657. This included both wells drilled to meet new demand and replace failed borewells. Of this amount, the cost of replacing failed borewells, worked out to $US 197,206. The original cost of 30 borewells that failed in this decade for both Gram Panchayats was $US 183,399”.
The financial burden doesn’t stop with drilling. As groundwater sinks lower, pumping costs rise sharply. The average Gram Panchayat depths of drinking water borewells increased from 183 metres (2001–2011) to 321 metres (2011–2021). Deeper wells mean higher electricity consumption—and higher bills.
Electricity costs for pumping water now exceed all the revenue Gram Panchayats collect, whether through household tariffs, property taxes, or government allocations. Households currently pay a flat rate tariff of just ₹50–₹100 per month, but this makes up less than 20 percent of the Panchayat’s total revenue—and that revenue has to cover everything from staff salaries to gutter cleaning, not just water and sanitation.
The result is a mountain of debt. Both Gram Panchayats have been in arrears to the state electricity board for nearly a decade, with unpaid bills piling up interest year after year. Today, the annual total cost of electricity for pumping, including interest on arrears, is four times higher than the cost of drilling new borewells each year (~8200 USD for drilling and electricity connection of 300 meters deep borewell as per 2020).
To try and cope, Panchayats have launched tax collection drives to clear these debts, since access to other government development programmes is tied to repayment. But their revenues don’t even scratch the surface of the bills, making it feel like an impossible task.
For now, the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) covers the capital cost of drilling new borewells. But if current trends continue, Panchayats may soon be saddled with both the drilling costs and the spiraling electricity bills—a double burden that could make rural water supply financially unsustainable.
The story of Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru Gram Panchayats near Bengaluru is a warning bell for rural India. Here, groundwater is vanishing fast, and the costs of keeping the taps running are spiraling out of control. If things continue this way, rural drinking water supply simply won’t be sustainable.
Why? The biggest culprit is the free electricity policy for farmers, which has encouraged the unchecked pumping of groundwater for irrigation. Even though drip irrigation has expanded in recent years and reduced water use per acre, overall withdrawals still far exceed what rainfall can recharge. The aquifer is being mined faster than it can be replenished.
For Gram Panchayats, the struggle is twofold: the cost of drilling deeper borewells for drinking water, and the rising electricity bills for pumping. To keep up, Panchayats are forced to raise local taxes, but even then, the revenue is nowhere near enough to cover expenses. Households, in turn, feel the pinch—diverting money away from essentials like education and health just to secure water.
Current policies are worsening the problem. Instead of tackling groundwater over-abstraction, the focus has been on recharging groundwater and maintaining free electricity for irrigation. This may win political support, but it pushes a heavy financial burden onto local governments and, ultimately, rural communities who are least able to afford it.
What is happening in Aralumallige and Doddathumakuru is not unique. Similar risks loom over many rural areas across Karnataka and the rest of peninsular India. The authors of the study warn that rural water service providers need to recognise these threats to drinking water security and push for a fundamentally different approach. One possible solution, they suggest, could be to incentivise farmers to shift towards diversified income sources—options that boost farmer incomes while also easing pressure on groundwater. Without such shifts, the cycle of debt, depletion, and unsustainable water supply will only deepen.