Tanks battle polluted groundwater in Haryana

Ikbal Khan, 60, speaks in Hindi accented with a strong, rough Mewati accent. He recalls a time, over 25 years ago, when women from his village of Ghaghas would fetch drinking water from a well on the outskirts of the village. As the groundwater diminished, borewells were sunk. “But over the past four to five years, the groundwater has turned salty,” he says. People in Nuh district in Haryana began constructing kundas, underground water tanks, some with government support.

Ikbal, like most of his fellow villagers, constructed one a month ago. He spent ₹60,000, with financial aid from the Block Samiti, a rural government body. Ikbal lives below the poverty line, with an annual income of less than ₹1.8 lakh. His tank, like most others, has a capacity of around 20,000 litres. The farming family uses the water only to drink, relying on the rain to feed the crop. This cuts the produce per acre to less than half that well-irrigated land brings in.

Before his family of six got their own tank, Ikbal used to share one with other families. This is common in this village of about 5,000 people, which now has close to 200 tanks. Together, three or four families bear the cost of water, supplied by privately owned water tankers. This way, they share the financial burden.

Ghaghas is situated in the foothills of the Aravali mountain range, 10 km off National Highway 248A, connecting Gurugram in Haryana to Alwar in Rajasthan. Nuh figures among the government think-tank NITI Aayog’s list of 100 ‘Aspirational Districts’, for faring poorly on various development parameters. But it’s not just Nuh. More than two-thirds of Haryana’s districts face a groundwater crisis. Harmful chemicals have entered underground streams, making the water unfit for drinking and irrigation.

The Annual Ground Water Quality Report, 2024 released by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) in December 2024, stated that fluoride concentrations exceeded the permissible limit in Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. Haryana was second on the list, with 208 out of 879 samples containing excessive fluoride. In addition, several samples had arsenic beyond permissible limits. Long-term exposure to both these contaminants can have severe health consequences, including fluorosis that degrades the skeletal system and causes cancer.

Out of Haryana’s 22 districts, anomalous values of uranium (over 30 parts per billion) were found in 16 districts. This makes it part of the “over-exploited, critical, and semi-critical groundwater stress zones”, the report says. Chronic exposure to uranium can lead to kidney damage. The report was based on groundwater samples collected from 15,259 background monitoring network stations in May 2023 across India.

In Haryana, 19 districts had a high electrical conductivity (EC) groundwater value. This is a measure of the ease with which water conducts electricity, indicative of the degree of salinity.

Referring to the CGWB report, Indian National Lok Dal leader and Rania MLA Arjun Chautala raised the issue of deteriorating groundwater quality during the Budget Session in the Haryana Assembly this year. The first-time MLA said the report had made alarming revelations. He said groundwater contamination is a serious matter and that attention must be paid to ensure testing and reducing rising uranium levels in the Ghaghar and other rivers.

Haryana Public Health Engineering Minister Ranbir Gangwa, in his reply, informed the House that a water testing laboratory had been established in every district of the State.

Community reports

Activist and convener of community-led Mewat RTI Manch Rajuddin Meo, who led a campaign, Jal Care Mission, for clean drinking water in Nuh in 2009, says, “The groundwater crisis is now serious. The water here has become so salty that even birds and animals do not drink it.” He adds that Nagina block bore the brunt. Out of 68 villages, 26, including Ghaghas, were the worst hit.

“A survey by the Haryana government in 2022 identified these 26 villages as having levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) beyond the permissible limit,” he says. Nuh district water testing laboratory sources confirm this. “Of 860 borewells, 70 had a TDS over the permissible level of 2,000 mg/litre,” says a source.

Meo says a locality of around 100 families in Ghaghas continues to use the groundwater as they cannot afford water from the tankers. He claims that the government’s free piped drinking water to Nuh villages is yet to cover the entire district. “Also, the ₹2,100 crore three-phase Mewat Canal project, announced by former CM Manohar Lal, is yet to take off.” A pipeline of the Central government’s Jal Jeevan Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation for Rural and Urban Areas was laid in Ghaghas last year. Villagers say it is being tested, so there is no regular drinking water supply.

About half an hour’s drive from Ghaghas, down the highway, across the road, is Madhi village. Mohammad Jubair, 58, sits under a thorn-ridden keekar tree, often the only foliage in this water-starved area. His white beard matches white turban and kurta. He claims that the village is divided into three localities for water supply through pipelines. “Each locality gets only 10 minutes of piped water supply every third day. We need at least 30 minutes a day to meet our household’s water needs,” he says.

Tanker supply

Mohammad Sabir, 42, on a handicap tricycle, joins the conversation, adding that the water supply is only in name and the village is dependent on private water tankers. People in Jhajjar and Hisar had similar stories. Agroha, Barwala, and Adampur blocks of Hisar are the worst hit.

Many village panchayats in Hisar have bought their own tankers. “Dushyant Chautala (former Deputy CM) had facilitated a donation of 50 tankers through a private firm four years ago,” says Suresh Kumar, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Hisar) president. He lives in Durjanpur village.

Raj Kumar, Jhajjar’s Kheri Khumar village sarpanch, says, “The two wells in the village have been abandoned, as the water is not fit for drinking. We are dependent on a canal for irrigation and drinking water.” Around a dozen villages in Jhajjar district, including Gudha, Dhor, and Palra, also face similar problems. Sushila, the sarpanch of the neighbouring Khatiwas village, wonders what will happen when the canal dries up.

Sandeep Kumar, an executive engineer at the Public Health Engineering Department in Punhana block, Nuh, says the whole district has piped water. “About 100 villages face difficulties, including those pertaining to illegal connections, but Madhi does not have a problem.”

When Arjun Chautala raised the issue of groundwater in the Assembly, Chief Minister Nayab Saini had said that the government had, as part of its commitment to ensure the supply of clean drinking water, worked to provide tap water to every household in the last 10 years.

Hazi Fateh Mohammad, who has been running a water supply business for the past decade, selling water to three or four villages in Nagina block, Nuh district, says the demand for tankers has decreased since the arrival of the pipeline. “We supplied 25-30 tankers during the month of Ramzan last year. Now it is down to 5-10 tankers.” He has installed a common water point fed by his tanks in his village of Nagina, where he gives water free of cost.

Maya, 65, a fellow resident of the village, says she fetches drinking water from here twice a day despite the piped water supply to her home. “Almost all households prefer groundwater from the filling point for drinking. It tastes better. The piped water is mostly used for washing, cleaning, and for animals,” she says.

Dilshad Khan, 32, is a marginal farmer in Madhi. He owns less than an acre of land and works as a truck driver to supplement his income. He shares a kunda with a neighbour, but they still find the water bill high. “A tanker costs ₹1,200 in winter, but it’s hard to find one for even ₹2,000 in summer. There’s often a five- to six-day waiting period. We need at least two tankers a month,” he says.

Like him, many others in Nuh own agricultural land, which is often too little to live off. People either rear cattle or work as drivers and helpers to make ends meet. “We are at the mercy of god! There is neither a canal nor any drain for irrigation,” says Irfan Khan, 35, who holds a vocational diploma from an industrial training institute. “The groundwater here is so salty that we cannot even bathe with it. It causes a burning sensation. We put out clay pots filled with the tanker water even for the birds,” he says.

In Haryana, 1.14% samples have high sodium levels and 0.34% have very high levels making the groundwater unfit for irrigation, as per the CGWB report. The CGWB has listed some of the reasons for deteriorating groundwater quality. These included an excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in farming, improper waste disposal, sewage leakage, landfill contamination, and the over-extraction of groundwater, among others.

Kumar from Hisar says the government’s approach to the crisis seemed short-term, with the stress mainly on supplying water through a pipeline. “Instead of focusing on long-term sustainable solutions, such as recharging groundwater and promoting crop diversification to reduce the extraction of groundwater, the government is taking stop-gap measures,” he says.

Shiv Singh Rawat retired as a superintending engineer in the Haryana government’s Irrigation and Water Resources department. He is now the convener of the Yamuna Bachao Abhiyan, a movement to clean up the river ghats and protect the river from pollution.

He advocates for a comprehensive and sustainable water management strategy to move from water scarcity to water security. He suggests “holistic solutions adopted globally for water management, such as floodwater aquifer rechargers, large-scale rainwater harvesting, and the reuse of treated wastewater”.

He also wishes that States would cooperate to resolve interstate water disputes, like the ongoing Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal and Ravi-Beas water allocation issue between Haryana and Punjab. “Investment in climate-resilient infrastructure is needed to withstand the impact of erratic rainfall and rising temperatures,” says Rawat. He also calls for improving public awareness and participation in water conservation efforts.

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Edited by Sunalini Mathew