Distributional Inequality and Groundwater Depletion: An Analysis Across Major States in India

Abstract

The famous work of Hardin on ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ explains why the Common Pool Resources (CPR) or Open Access Resources are over-exploited, degraded or depleted. The economic reason explains that “unregulated access to the CPR creates a decision making environment in which private benefits to an individual from the increased use of resources markedly exceed the incremental private cost associated with the increased use” (Hardin, 1968). This is further explained that the Common Pool Problem is basically the existence of one externality, i.e., divergence between private cost and social cost of exploitation, which eventually leads to either depletion or overcrowding or congestion (Friedman, 1971). This is due to the manifestation of either absence of exclusive private property rights or the breakdown of the structure of property rights (Randall, 1975). As a consequence, inequity in accessibility of CPR took place seriously. Various recent studies have confirmed that inequality exacerbate environmental problems or in other words, equalisation of wealth, social status and political power contribute to the environmental sustainability (Baland et al., 2007; Bardhan et al., 2007). The use of groundwater irrigation portrays similar characteristics in recent years in India despite lot of advantages in its use. Firstly, serious distributional inequity among various landholders took place in agricultural use due to lack of proper groundwater legislation and its executions at the state levels. As a result, serious depletion of the CPR took place despite their positive impacts on the overall economic development of the country. The inequity in distribution of land led to distributional inequity in groundwater irrigation. Secondly, slow growth of surface canal irrigation and watershed projects are not able to recharge sufficient groundwater to control the depletion. The most important development of irrigation