Even as India faces a cumulative rainfall deficit of 19% in the southwest monsoon so far this season, the country’s groundwater reserves remain largely stable, according to the agriculture ministry’s latest Crop Weather Watch Group (CWWG) report. Nearly 88% of groundwater monitoring wells across the country are still recording normal water levels, indicating that farmers in irrigated areas are unlikely to face immediate water stress despite varying rainfall, according to experts.
According to the report, 7,977 of the 9,085 groundwater monitoring wells evaluated nationwide fall into the normal category, while only 12.2% show varying degrees of groundwater dryness. About 69% of the wells monitored have groundwater levels within 10 meters below ground level, while only about 4% have water levels deeper than 40 metres, indicating sufficient groundwater availability in most areas. The ministry also noted that the 2026 pre-monsoon groundwater drought index showed that groundwater stress is limited to limited pockets in a few states.
Explaining why groundwater reserves are important, a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture said that the healthy status of groundwater provides an important guarantee for the current agricultural season despite the lack of rainfall. “The better or normal situation of groundwater before the kharif season indicates that where well-based tube irrigation is available, it can provide regular irrigation water to crops in case of possible gaps between rainfall,” the official said.
Describing the results as encouraging, DK Singh, a retired water technologist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), said the immediate impact of the lack of rainfall will be largely limited to areas where groundwater levels are already below normal. “For the impact to reverse this year itself, the groundwater must be lower than normal. So we may see some impact in areas that are still below normal,” Singh said.
Singh also warned that the true impact of this year’s weak monsoon on groundwater will not become clear for several months because aquifers respond to rainfall with a delay. He added: “The spatial distribution of rainfall will be crucial. Another factor that must be taken into consideration is that the impact of rainfall on groundwater comes with a lag. If rainfall is weak now, the decline in groundwater levels will not become apparent until after five to six months. Therefore, the deficit in rainfall this year will become a problem next year because the groundwater table will not be adequately filled.”
The reassuring national picture also masks chronic groundwater stress in many major agricultural states. The states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan continue to extract groundwater far beyond their annual capacity. In 2025, the groundwater extraction stage in Punjab reached 156.36%, followed by Rajasthan at 147.11% and Haryana at 136.75%, which are among the highest in the country, underscoring the challenge of long-term sustainability despite the current stability.
This assessment comes even though rainfall from June 1 to July 22 remained 19% below the long-period average, with the most severe deficits recorded in eastern and northeastern India (-32%), followed by the southern peninsula (-26%), northwest India (-13%), and central India (-9%). According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), northwestern, eastern and northeastern India are expected to witness active monsoon conditions during the current week, while rainfall activity is likely to remain weak over west-central and peninsular India.
The CWWG report also noted below-average soil moisture in parts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Marathwada, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, eastern West Bengal and pockets in the northeast, reflecting uneven distribution of monsoon rainfall.
