Reservoirs at 70% of Capacity, Below the Ten-Year Average, as the Monsoon Ends 12% Short

The news

Bengaluru and Gurugram. As the southwest monsoon season ends on September 30, water stored in 178 reservoirs across India stands at 70% of their total capacity, according to the Central Water Commission’s (CWC) live storage report dated September 24, The Indian Express reports. That is below the decadal average for the same period, 76.62%, and below last year’s 79%; the paper’s headline calls it a 10-year low. The CWC is the Centre’s technical body on surface water, and its bulletin tracks how much usable water sits behind major dams. The picture is grim for 92 reservoirs in the south, east and north. The southern region — Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu — has the lowest storage, at 50% (27.926 billion cubic metres) against 87.25% last year, and has received 23% below-normal rainfall as of September 28, per India Meteorological Department (IMD) data. All-India rainfall was 12% short of normal as of September 28. The report coincides with drought declarations in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The southwest monsoon brings over 70% of India’s annual rainfall, and El Niño is named as one of the factors behind this season’s shortfall. This card continues the 28 September card on the monsoon deficit; what is new is the storage data. The urban side appears in Gurugram, where a Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) affidavit to the Punjab and Haryana High Court shows groundwater levels fell at six of seven urban monitoring wells between the pre-monsoon seasons of 2025 and 2026. The deepest reading was 50.30 metres below ground level at Kherki Daula; four wells were deeper than 20 metres; falls ranged from 0.08 to 2.34 metres, sharpest at Baliawas, while only the Cell Office well rose, by 1.34 metres. District-wide, Khawaspur rose about 4.23 metres and Karola fell 5.41 metres. The CGWA told the court that regulation within the State is a statutory function of the Haryana Water Resources Authority. On September 22 the Bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor said the city floods every monsoon because storm runoff is not channelled into aquifers. The deficit also hides intensity. Odisha recorded 1,453 mm from June to September 25, a 29% excess, after a 47% deficit in June, with 11 systems over the Bay of Bengal, The Hindu’s editorial notes. Uttar Pradesh received 66.5 mm against a normal 7.6 mm over three days, with at least 62 dead, as a deep depression interacted with a Western Disturbance, the Express explains. The syllabus link is GS1 on monsoon geography and GS3 on water resources and disaster management.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The CWC measures surface storage; the CGWB and CGWA handle what lies underground. The Central Water Commission is the apex technical organisation for surface water under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, and it issues a weekly bulletin on the live storage of major reservoirs, compared with last year and with the ten-year average. Live storage is the usable water above the lowest outlet, as opposed to dead storage that cannot be released. The Central Ground Water Board monitors aquifers through a national network of observation wells and assesses groundwater resources jointly with the States. The Central Ground Water Authority was constituted under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 to regulate groundwater extraction, though several States now have their own regulators, as Haryana does.
2. IMD classifies a monsoon against its long period average. The southwest monsoon season runs from June 1 to September 30, and all-India rainfall is compared with the long period average (LPA), which is 87 cm for the 1971-2020 base. For the country as a whole, IMD calls a season deficient if rainfall is below 90% of the LPA, below normal between 90% and 95%, normal between 96% and 104%, above normal between 105% and 110%, and excess above 110%. For a region or subdivision, a departure within plus or minus 19% is counted as normal and a shortfall of 20% to 59% as deficient. On this scale a 12% shortfall places the country in the deficient band if it holds to September 30.
3. Groundwater is assessed on the stage of extraction. The dynamic groundwater resource assessment compares annual extraction with annual extractable recharge, and the ratio is the stage of extraction. Blocks are categorised as safe, semi-critical, critical or over-exploited, the last meaning extraction exceeds the annually replenishable resource. Depth to water level, which the Gurugram affidavit uses, is how far below the surface the water table lies; a larger number means a deeper, more depleted table. Water is a State subject under Entry 17 of the State List, subject to Entry 56 of the Union List on inter-State rivers.
4. The Centre’s groundwater schemes rely on recharge and community management. The Atal Bhujal Yojana, launched in December 2019 with World Bank support, promotes community-led groundwater management in water-stressed blocks of seven States: Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain campaign, launched in 2021, asks districts to build and revive water-harvesting structures to “catch the rain, where it falls, when it falls”. Both depend on local bodies and on rainfall being captured rather than lost as runoff. El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the equatorial Pacific, is historically associated with weaker Indian monsoons, though not every El Niño year is a drought year.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS1 asks about monsoon mechanisms and GS3 about water security. UPSC has asked about the factors affecting the Indian monsoon, including El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, and Mains has asked about groundwater depletion and water-use efficiency. Reservoir storage connects the two: it is the bridge between a weak monsoon and the rabi season, drinking water and hydropower.
2. Prelims tests institutions and classifications. Questions have covered which ministry or body does what in water management and how IMD defines a normal monsoon. The CWC’s role, the CGWA’s statutory origin, groundwater categories and the LPA thresholds are all fair targets.
3. Disaster management questions increasingly ask about extremes within a season. The coexistence of deficit and flood — Odisha’s 29% excess, UP’s deluge and Gurugram’s flooding over falling water tables — suits GS3 questions on disaster management and climate change. Answers that show the difference between total rainfall and rainfall distribution score well.

Analysis

1. Storage at 70% is not a crisis nationally, but averages hide the southern emergency. Seventy per cent is more than two-thirds full, and a year earlier the figure was 79%, so the national number alone would not justify alarm. The alarming number is the south’s 50% against 87.25% last year, in a region that has had 23% less rain and depends heavily on reservoirs and tanks for both drinking water and paddy. Southern cities and farms enter the dry season with roughly half the buffer they had a year ago. Water managers should therefore plan releases region by region, prioritising drinking water and standing crops, rather than read comfort into the all-India average.
2. Reservoirs and aquifers fail together, which removes the usual fallback. In a normal dry year, farmers and cities that lose canal water switch to tubewells, drawing down groundwater. Gurugram shows that the fallback is already weak in urban areas: water levels fell at six of seven urban wells even before this deficit, with Kherki Daula at 50.30 metres. When surface and underground stores are low together, drought moves from agriculture into drinking water and urban supply. That is why the drought declarations in Maharashtra and Karnataka should trigger groundwater regulation as well as relief.
3. Gurugram’s paradox is a failure of urban design, not of rainfall. The High Court’s point is that the city floods every monsoon because storm runoff is sent into drains instead of into the aquifers, while buildings depend on private tubewells. The litigation since 2008 alleges that projects were approved without matching water supply and drainage. Recharge wells, permeable surfaces, protected natural drains and metering of tubewells are known solutions. The counter-view is that aquifer recharge in built-up areas is slow and prone to contamination, so it cannot replace piped surface water; both are needed.
4. A deficit season can still be a flood season, and planning must hold both ideas. Odisha had a 29% excess after a 47% deficit in June, with at least 60 locations receiving more than 100 mm in 24 hours, and Uttar Pradesh received 66.5 mm in three days against 7.6 mm normal. The Hindu cites an Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology study finding that one-day and five-day rainfall bursts are becoming more common while heavy-rain days dip. This means the same monsoon can leave reservoirs short in one basin and cities underwater in another. Storage and drainage infrastructure designed for average rain will fail at both ends, which argues for capturing intense bursts in recharge and storage rather than draining them away.
5. El Niño explains part of the shortfall, not the management choices. The Express names El Niño as one factor, and IMD had forecast about 90% of the LPA partly because an El Niño was expected, The Hindu notes. But a forecast in advance is also a warning in advance, and the right response is early adjustment of crop plans, reservoir release rules and urban supply. States that treated the forecast as a signal to conserve will have more water today than those that did not. Climate variability is a given; the losses depend on whether institutions act on the information they already have.

Administrator's brainstorm