HIDDEN RESOURCE

Punjab's 1.4 million abandoned borewells offer a chance to mitigate flood damage and replenish depleting groundwater

- RAMAN JEET SINGH AND GAURAV SINGH

THE 2025 southwest monsoon brought to Punjab its worst flood in four decades.

In late August, all the major rivers that flow through the state flooded simultaneously—perhaps for the first time. The disaster was driven by unusually heavy rainfall in Punjab as well as in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir and compounded by sudden release of water from swollen dams (see “Plan or perish”, Down To Earth, 16-30 September, 2025).

By the time the floodwaters receded in early September, more than 800,000 people had been displaced, with thousands shifting to relief camps. Nearly 0.17 million hectares (ha) of farmland were submerged and infrastructure collapsed as roads, bridges and drainage systems were damaged across districts. In the successive months, the state government has announced the release of funds and foodgrains to support relief and rehabilitation across affected villages.

Given that this is not only Punjab’s worst flooding event but also the third such disaster since 2019, there is a need to look at long-term flood mitigation rather than short-term recovery. Punjab may already possess a potential mitigation tool: its vast number of abandoned borewells.

Borewells have been part of Punjab’s landscape since the Green Revolution in the 1960s. Their construction picked up pace in 1997-98, when the groundwater levels stood at around 12 m. Over the next two decades, however, groundwater extraction intensified and its levels fell sharply, in many places reaching depths of 150 m or more. As the water table declined, existing borewells were dug deeper, but ultimately most of them were abandoned.