New Delhi: A new study by American space agency NASA is going to add to the mounting worries of a failing monsoon in India. Using some sophisticated satellite images, the team has found that water table in northwestern India is depleting faster than it is being replenished.
Using technology that measures changes in gravity, NASA noticed that it's underground water is falling at a rapid rate of four cm a year. And it's faster in some places than others.
"We have animated the ground water storage variations based on GRACE observations. Blue means there is more ground water storage and red means there is less. Over the six years of the study we go from blues in the region to yellows to reds and that indicates we have lost quite a bit of water ground water over the course of six years," said Matthew Rodell, a NASA scientist.
A drought like this year's only aggravates the situation. Farmers tend to use underground water a lot more to irrigate their fields as there's little rain.
Cities are equally culpable because of an overuse of water.
A report in Nature says the unsustainable rate of drawing water will mean severe water shortages and reduced agricultural productivity, which means India's granary is literally being sucked dry.