The protests by farmers over water scarcity near Bengaluru entered the eleventh day on Friday and serve as a stern warning about the calamity that may soon explode across India.

An analysis of 13,628 groundwater aquifers or wells across 30 states and UTs by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWA) over a decade (2009 to 2018) has revealed shocking facts. About 61% of all aquifers registered a steady decline in groundwater levels.

Maharashtra is in the serious category as of the 1,645 aquifers monitored, 1,241 or 75%) show a decline in water-levels. The crisis is even more severe in Karnataka, where 881 or 80% of 1,098 aquifers analysed have registered a fall.

Only four states and one UT can boast that less than 50% of the aquifers have dried up: Himachal Pradesh (20%), Meghalaya (26%), Odisha (31%), Daman & Diu (45%) and West Bengal (49%).

CGWA pins the blame for the crisis on increased demand and wastage of freshwater, vagaries of rainfall, increased population, rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, unbridled extraction and non-implementation of rainwater harvesting methods.

"There are no shortcuts," a CGWA official said, "We will have to save, conserve and recharge water and need strong legislation to make it happen or else the crisis will turn into a calamity soon."

He criticised the lack of effort by Centre and State to label groundwater a national resource and protect it. "What we need is strong legislation that could restrict groundwater water extraction by capping it with incremental fees and fine. But instead of making the rules stringent, the government even removed the mandatory limit on reuse of water extracted by industries last year," said an official.

"We expect from the new Jalshakti Ministry to bring out legislation to address the grey areas. For example, extraction rules should also apply to residential areas that are often seen exploiting huge amounts of groundwater without implementing rainwater harvesting," added the CGWA official.

According to CGWA, out of the total 6,881 assessment units at block, taluka and mandal levels, 1,186 units in 17 states or union territories have been categorised as over-exploited where current annual groundwater extraction is more than the annual extractable groundwater resource.