Jal Shakti

India’s water context

According to the Ministry of Jal Shakti, India is home to about 18% of the world’s population but has only about 4% of its freshwater resources. Rainfall is concentrated in a few monsoon months and unevenly spread across regions. Large parts of the country rely on groundwater through the dry season.

The Ministry of Jal Shakti was formed in May 2019 by merging two departments: the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation and the Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation. It is headed by the Minister of Jal Shakti, and two Ministers of State, including V. Somanna, assist.

Groundwater

Groundwater is India’s most widely used water source. According to a PIB backgrounder (January 2026), it meets nearly 62% of irrigation needs, 85% of rural consumption and 50% of urban demand. The Central Ground Water Board and the States/UTs jointly assess the resource at the level of blocks, taluks and mandals. They classify each unit as safe, semi-critical, critical, over-exploited or saline, according to how much of the recharge is being extracted.

Karnataka. The 2025 assessment puts Karnataka’s stage of groundwater extraction at 66.49%, above the national figure: 11.58 bcm extracted against 17.41 bcm extractable. In the 2024 state assessment, 45 of Karnataka’s 237 taluks were categorised as over-exploited.

Drinking water

The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), run by the Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation with the States, aims to provide a functional household tap connection to every rural home. When the mission began in August 2019, 3.23 crore rural households had tap water. The Mission has since been extended to December 2028 as JJM 2.0, and its guidelines were released on World Water Day 2026.

Water quality is part of the same effort. A written reply given by V. Somanna in the Lok Sabha on 5 February 2026 records more than 2,800 water-testing laboratories. It also records 24.8 lakh women trained to use field test kits in their villages.

Water conservation

The Jal Shakti Abhiyan, begun in 2019 and run since 2021 as “Catch the Rain”, is a campaign to build and revive water-harvesting structures, from ponds and tanks to recharge wells, with district administrations and communities. The national groundwater assessment reflects its effect on recharge: recharge from tanks, ponds and water-conservation structures rose from 13.98 bcm in 2017 to 25.34 bcm in 2024.

Recognition and participation are part of the approach. The National Water Awards recognise states, districts, panchayats and institutions, and Jal Mahotsav in 2026 was a nationwide programme that closed on World Water Day. PIB records that at the close of Jal Mahotsav on 22 March 2026, V. Somanna said water conservation “must become a daily collective responsibility”.

Irrigation

Irrigation investment is organised under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), which has four components, split between ministries:

• Ministry of Jal Shakti: the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP), which funds the completion of major and medium irrigation projects, and Har Khet Ko Pani, which covers command-area development and surface minor irrigation.
• Other ministries: Per Drop More Crop (micro-irrigation) and Watershed Development.

Because most irrigation in India depends on groundwater, irrigation policy and groundwater management are closely linked. That link runs through the ministry’s assessments and the Atal Bhujal Yojana described below.

Water security

Water security depends on whether the resource can keep meeting demand. At national level, the share of over-exploited groundwater assessment units fell from 17.2% in 2017 to 10.8% in 2025, and total annual recharge rose from 432 bcm to 448.52 bcm over the same period, according to official assessments.

The Atal Bhujal Yojana is the ministry’s community-led groundwater management scheme. It was launched on 25 December 2019 and implemented from April 2020 in 8,220 water-stressed gram panchayats in 80 districts across seven states, including Karnataka. The ministry reports more than 83,000 recharge structures built and over 9 lakh hectares brought under efficient irrigation practices.

Sustainable water management

Managing water sustainably means knowing what exists, what is withdrawn and what is returned. The annual groundwater assessments, now run through the IN-GRES web platform, are the ministry’s main measurement tool.

In his message in the 2024 edition of the national groundwater compilation, dated 27 December 2024, V. Somanna noted that “around 70% of India is characterized by hard rock formations”. He wrote that, “considering our heavy dependence on ground water”, judicious development of the resource is “the need of the hour”.