Groundwater Improved to 73% Safe. The Risk Now Sits in 730 Blocks.
Sustainability in an agriculture portfolio is usually discussed as a reporting obligation — something owed to a board, a regulator or an investor at the end of the year. Groundwater is where it stops being a reporting exercise. India's aquifers are assessed block by block, every year, against a published threshold, and the category a block falls into now carries regulatory charges, funding priorities and siting consequences. The latest assessment says the national position improved again. It also says the remaining risk has concentrated into a smaller, identifiable set of blocks — which is exactly the kind of risk an institution can still act on.
The national ledger, in three numbers
The Central Ground Water Board's annual dynamic assessment, carried out with state governments, puts total annual recharge at 448.52 BCM, the extractable resource at 407.75 billion cubic metres, and total extraction at 247.22 billion cubic metres for 2025. The ratio of the last two — the stage of extraction — is 60.63% for the country as a whole.
That ratio is also the classification rule. An assessment unit — generally a block, tehsil, taluka or mandal — extracting below 70% of its extractable resource is categorised Safe; 70–90% is Semi-critical; 90–100% is Critical; above 100%, meaning extraction exceeds the annually replenishable resource, is Over-exploited. Of 6,762 units assessed for 2025, 4,946 are Safe, 758 Semi-critical, 201 Critical, 730 Over-exploited and 127 Saline.
| Category | Assessment units | Share | Stage of extraction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safe | 4,946 | 73.14% | Below 70% |
| Semi-critical | 758 | 11.21% | 70–90% |
| Critical | 201 | 2.97% | 90–100% |
| Over-exploited | 730 | 10.80% | Above 100% |
| Saline | 127 | 1.88% | — |
Source: CGWB Dynamic Ground Water Resource Assessment 2025, Ministry of Jal Shakti. Chart: Farmioc.
The improvement is eight years long, not one season
A single year's category can move with one monsoon. The trend behind the 2025 figures is longer than that. Between 2017 and 2025, assessed national recharge rose from 432 BCM to 448.52 BCM, the Safe share of units rose from 62.6% to 73.14%, and the Over-exploited share fell from 17.2% to 10.8%.
There is programme evidence behind at least part of that movement. Under the Atal Bhujal Yojana, a community-led groundwater management programme run in 8,203 water-stressed gram panchayats across 229 blocks in seven states, more than 83,000 rainwater-harvesting and recharge structures were completed and over 9 lakh hectares were brought under more efficient irrigation practices. In periodic assessments between 2023 and 2025, 180 of 229 blocks showed improvement in groundwater levels. That does not prove the programme caused every improvement — rainfall and state schemes run alongside it — but it does show the category is movable by deliberate recharge and demand management, which matters when an institution is deciding whether engagement in a stressed block is worthwhile or whether only exit makes sense.
The concentration problem
The national stage of extraction, 60.63%, is an average of two very different countries. At state level, extraction runs at 156.36% in Punjab — 26.27 BCM extracted against 16.80 BCM extractable — 147.11% in Rajasthan and 136.75% in Haryana, against 46.20% in Bihar and 14.45% in Assam. Delhi sits at 92.10%, inside the Critical band.
Inside Punjab, the concentration tightens further: 111 of 153 blocks are categorised Over-exploited, 10 are Critical and only 17 are Safe. A lender, processor or sourcing team whose exposure sits in the north-west is therefore not holding a share of the national 60.63% position. It is holding exposure to aquifers being drawn at one-and-a-half times their annual recharge, in blocks where that has been true for years. The correct unit of analysis is the assessment unit the exposure actually sits in — not the state average, and certainly not the national one.
The category is now a trigger, not a label
What makes the 2025 categories decision-grade is that other systems now key off them. The Central Ground Water Authority's 2020 guidelines prescribe stricter measures in Over-exploited, Critical and Semi-critical blocks, including higher extraction charges, heavier environmental compensation and penalties, and a prohibition on new large-scale industries in Over-exploited blocks. Public money follows the same map in the opposite direction: under the National Initiative on Water Security launched in September 2025, at least 65% of funds under MGNREGS in Over-exploited and Critical blocks is to be spent on water-conservation works, and 40% in Semi-critical blocks.
For a food processor siting or expanding a plant, a lender setting a long-dated exposure limit, or an FMCG company mapping a sourcing district, the category therefore affects three practical things at once: what groundwater use will cost and whether an industrial permission is available at all, how much public recharge investment the block is likely to receive, and how the aquifer position is likely to move over the life of the asset. That is a cash-flow and continuity variable, not only an environmental one.
Why this belongs in the sustainability file
The disclosure direction points the same way. In February 2024 the Reserve Bank of India placed draft guidelines for a disclosure framework on climate-related financial risks on its website, covering scheduled commercial banks, all-India financial institutions including NABARD, and top and upper-layer NBFCs. The framework remains a draft — no final compliance calendar should be assumed — but its direction is that regulated lenders will need structured, evidence-based disclosure of physical climate risk in their portfolios. An agriculture book mapped to groundwater assessment units is one of the few physical-risk views in Indian agriculture that already exists at block resolution, is updated annually, and is produced by a public authority rather than by the reporting institution itself.
The measurement base underneath it is also getting denser. CGWB monitoring runs through roughly 27,000 groundwater-level stations and 20,000 quality stations, supplemented by around 22,000 Digital Water Level Recorders transmitting level data by telemetry. Two limits still belong in any use of the data. First, the category is an annual assessment of a block-sized unit: it will not capture variation between villages or farms inside the block. Second, the category measures quantity, not quality — water quality is monitored separately, and the national position recorded by CGWB is that groundwater remains largely potable, with localised occurrences of contaminants such as arsenic, fluoride and uranium above drinking-water limits in isolated pockets. A siting or sourcing check that reads the quantity category without the quality record is only half a check.
What an institution should do with the 2025 map
Map exposure at assessment-unit level. Loan books, plant locations, warehouses and sourcing districts should each carry the category of the unit they sit in. A portfolio reported only at state level will hide Over-exploited exposure inside a Safe state average.
Track migration, not just the current category. A Semi-critical block that has moved up a category in successive assessments is a different risk from one that has been stable for a decade. The annual series exists; the trend is the signal for long-dated decisions.
Separate the quantity question from the quality question. Extraction category decides cost, permission and continuity risk. The quality record decides suitability for food processing and drinking-water-dependent uses. Run both checks, from their separate datasets.
Price the trigger, not only the resource. In a stressed block, budget for the extraction charges and compensation regime that the category brings, the possibility that new industrial groundwater use is restricted, and the recharge investment the category attracts. All three follow from the same line in the assessment.
Where Farmioc fits
Farmioc DataStore organises supply and demand, yield and harvest outlooks, and satellite and ground-based environmental data by crop and region, with predictive analytics for the financial sector, agribusiness and input companies. Joined to an institution's own book or sourcing map, that is the layer that turns a published block category into an exposure view: which parts of the portfolio sit on aquifers being drawn faster than they refill, how those blocks have moved across assessments, and where the institution's own crop and water signals confirm or complicate the official picture.
India's groundwater ledger genuinely improved in 2025 — more recharge assessed, more blocks Safe, fewer Over-exploited than eight years ago. The remaining risk did not spread thinner. It concentrated, into 730 named blocks with published coordinates in all but name. For an institution, that is the most manageable kind of sustainability risk there is: the kind you can list.
Farmioc is India's agriculture data analytics and agri trading company. Explore DataStore for supply, demand and yield analytics, or PriceHub for commodity market intelligence across 200+ crops.