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Dr Himanshu Kulkarni, Founder and Director of ACWADAM, has had a remarkable journey, fueled by a passion to explore the unexplored, that which cannot be seen to the naked eye – “groundwater, the lifeline for millions in India”.
A leading expert on the subject of groundwater in the country, Dr. Kulkarni has been named as the 2025 recipient of the International Water Prize at the University of Oklahoma WaTER Symposium, a biennial award sponsored by the OU Water Technologies for Emerging Regions (WaTER) Centre, for his exemplary work and dedication to the science and praxis of groundwater. He shares his journey with us and delves into what it takes to manage groundwater sustainably and democratically in the face of growing challenges.
What triggered your interest in groundwater?
I had not planned on studying geology and groundwater. I chanced upon geology as a subject during my undergraduate year and fell in love with it and continued studying geology for my Masters. While completing my Masters, I passed the CSIR national test, and was awarded a scholarship to pursue a PhD.
My young PhD supervisor then and subsequently my guru in groundwater, and our Founder Chairperson, Dr SB Deolankar, told me that we would embark on this journey of understanding groundwater together. He introduced me to the work of Mr. Vilasrao Salunke who explained to me the principles and practices under the concept of a Pani Panchayat. My PhD on groundwater evolved into issues that were local and involved a study on an aquifer and the potential application of the understanding of aquifers to solving socio-economic problems, particularly in rural areas.
After my PhD, I obtained a postdoctoral and a CSIR research scientist’s position at the University of Pune, where besides teaching, I continued to study a single aquifer system for nearly 15 years, and was able to observe the transitions in groundwater usage in the aquifer driven by changes in energy, cropping patterns and rapid transitions from subsistence cropping to cash-crop markets and its consequences for groundwater and wells over this period.
My post-doctoral work, again supported by CSIR, involved collaborative work between the University of Pune and the British Geological Society and helped me understand how and why long term declines in groundwater happen in shallow aquifers. We produced a report in 1995 on the impact of growing groundwater pumping on drinking water supplies – perhaps the first local-level scientific narration of what happens to drinking water supplies in a basalt aquifer in a village, with increasing usage of groundwater (from the same aquifer) for irrigation.
This was also a point when I started wondering on how one could take research on groundwater out of the ivory towers of the academia and embed the knowledge ensuing from such research within real-world situations in the thousands of water scarce villages in the country. These thoughts were what seeded the idea of ACWADAM – Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management.
Could you please tell us about the journey of ACWADAM?
With strong backing from my peers and teachers, I plunged headlong into taking forward the concept of ‘from research to applications’ on groundwater, through ACWADAM. Seven of us - three generations of students and teachers from the University of Pune - got together in founding ACWADAM and agreed that ACWADAM should begin working at the intersection/interface of knowledge /theory and praxis of groundwater. Being the operational face of ACWADAM, I was able to draw upon their knowledge and wisdom and we were successful, at least to a noticeable extent, in taking the knowledge and research on groundwater out of the ivory towers of academia to seed it into the ground.
We knew of the problems in the development sector, especially in rural India, and we had already begun collaborative work with Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) in Madhya Pradesh and Society For Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) in Pune who asked us probing questions. SPS, for instance, was working on a watershed programme, and they realised that water did not stay in one of the check dams that they built and they wanted answers. SOPPECOM too had a specific query in why a large percolation tank built in the watershed of one village benefits wells from another village in a different watershed.
Questions like these triggered our work and ACWADAM began by building partnerships with civil society organisations in trying to answer such questions. ACWADAM was then invited to partner by British Geological Survey (BGS) to work on two collaborative, multipartner research projects, the first related to community management of groundwater resources (COMMAN) in rural India, and the second, on augmenting groundwater resources through artificial recharge (AGRAR). Both fitted into our aim of combining the science and praxis of groundwater.
We also started doing trainings for various civil society organisations, beginning with the applications of hydrogeology in watershed management. The first few years were spent in traveling, identifying issues and strengthening our core hydrogeological understanding even while we attempted to include several other disciplines such as human geography, agriculture, sociology, economics and the environment in our work on groundwater.
How did work at ACWADAM gradually evolve?
The second phase of ACWADAM’s work was indeed interesting! We received three concurrent grants - from three well-known funders - in the same year, i.e. in 2006.
The first grant helped us strengthen and develop the systematics of groundwater training for people who did not have formal training on groundwater such as managers and field-level workers from civil society organisations. Such training has evolved into a one-of-its kind 15-day foundation training course, earlier called “Hydrogeology for watershed management” but now expanded into “Aquifer-based groundwater management and groundwater governance”.
The training has helped inform, sensitise and build awareness around groundwater issues within civil society organisations and possibly beyond. It also helped the ACWADAM team travel to different locations and handhold work happening in the field and in the decisions and follow-up actions resulting from the process.
The second grant involved aquifer mapping and development of protocols of aquifer management in 100 villages in partnership with SPS and the application of this in their watershed programme in a fairly large area covering 600 km2 in the Narmada valley. We “typologised” this area into six different settings to develop an aquifer management protocol. This greatly helped us in increasing our knowledge on aquifers and the constantly evolving socio-hydrological dynamics around groundwater, even in some of the most remote locations in such areas. The protocols of groundwater management that emerged from this work are today relevant in much of the work that has followed through various programmes on groundwater.
With the third grant, we worked on the idea of groundwater as a common pool resource and revisited the Pani Panchayat model through a partnership with Gram Gaurav Pratishthan (GGP), an organisation founded by Mr. Vilasrao Salunke. We tried to understand what was happening in Purandar taluka of Pune district, where we selected one village, one watershed, one aquifer system by attempting to imbibe the Pani Panchayat principles into water management. Again, this involved detailed mapping of aquifers in 15 different villages as the first phase, followed by a detailed actionable agenda of forming small groundwater-user groups to cover all the families in the area, an idea that was implemented by GGP.
All these experiences, including both, the successes and failures, helped us to engage with similar experiences but varying contexts from other regions and partner with other organisations like ACT, WASSAN, FES, MPA, PSI and our continued work with SPS and SOPPECOM. The concept of participatory groundwater management (PGWM), a programme that set the tone for larger initiatives including the development of the contours of Atal Jal Yojana and the inclusion of groundwater as a key focal area in other flagship programmes on water, gradually evolved out of these interactions.
At about this time, we also became actively engaged with the work of Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Forum), wherein we learned the importance of understanding and dealing with conflicts over water. This opportunity helped in the articulation of the need to understand the largely invisible competition that takes place over groundwater resources before any conflict becomes apparent.
How did ACWADAM venture into the work on springs?
The dependencies of Himalayan people on spring water were well-known, but the growing vulnerability was a cause for concern, which began to be highlighted in the early 2000s. Sometime during 2006, we were invited to visit a few locations in Uttarakhand to provide inputs and partner with two organisations, namely People’s Science Institute (PSI) and CHIRAG in the Garhwal and Kumaon regions respectively on spring restoration work.
Thus, while PGWM was taking shape through work by a few civil society organisations, we also started working on the concept of spring revival leading to the process of springshed management, a term that was coined by our friend Dr. Sandeep Tambe, who was then Additional Secretary of Rural Management and Development Department with the Government of Sikkim. With the help of PSI, ACWADAM was able to partner with the Government of Sikkim, our very first engagement with any State Government. PGWM and Participatory Springshed Management (PSSM), both had different contexts, but similar principles of managing groundwater as a common pool resource.
We realised that in many places, springs were located in one watershed while the recharge areas of the aquifers from which they emerged were in the antipodal area (in another watershed) and what one did on the other side (including undertaking artificial recharge measures) affected water availability in such springs. We soon realised that there was a need to understand mountain aquifers and for integrating different watersheds connected by common aquifers over larger areas in the mountains. Springshed management has allowed us to partner with a variety of organisations and initiatives including work by Himmotthan, NEIDA, various State Governments (nearly all the Indian Himalayan States) through many different collaborations.
How did the connection between this work and its recognition at the policy level happen?
To be honest, I got pulled into the policy space when Dr Mihir Shah was appointed Member of the Planning Commission. He invited me to co-chair the Working Group on Sustainable Ground Water Management on the back of ACWADAM’s experience of working on decentralised groundwater management and governance largely through PGWM and PSSM. I was able to interact with many different experts and organisations as part of this work. I feel proud because this exercise of engaging with policy gave groundwater a place in the sun, so to say, providing the impetus to the national aquifer mapping programme.
The policy aspect started coming together for us at ACWADAM and we found ourselves working more and more at the interface of science, knowledge, praxis and policy after 2010. We had a number of policy engagements as I became more involved in the larger domain of water institutions, policy and governance. This engagement was rewarding for ACWADAM as we were able to learn more about the subject of water in policy and institutions than we could have otherwise done. We also started moving into newer areas, especially on work relating to urban groundwater management. Our first partnership was at the request of S Vishwanath and the team from Biome Trust with support from another important funder.
This work made us look at our own backyard, triggering the work on urban aquifers in Pune. We have completed a systematic mapping and characterisation of Pune’s aquifers and the post-study work is ongoing and has a strong interface with the Municipalities of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. As a matter of fact, these projects led us to work closely with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on their programme related to restoring and reviving shallow aquifers in a few locations in ten cities across India.
While work on the ground expanded, including the setting up of an experimental groundwater station for a six year programme on strengthening ACWADAM’s science base through a strategic resource from another well-known funder, we were also able to further consolidate our lessons, experience and action research at the interface of knowledge, praxis and policy. Most of our work now is at this interface through a combination of training, education, action research and outreach on bringing aquifers and community at a convergence to enable improved management and governance of groundwater.
What is your view on the current groundwater situation and what is ACWADAM’s vision for the future?
The following aspects are important to remember in any work that lies ahead for better management of groundwater in India:
By and large, the work on groundwater still happens in silos. PGWM is one template where all these can be brought together. Sustainable groundwater management cannot be possible without the decentralised governance of aquifers through equitable groundwater planning and management. Increasing the efficiencies in supply along with managing demand are necessary in such governance. Systematic augmentation (Managed Aquifer Recharge) and understanding of aquifers must come together in any planning for the use of groundwater, while also exploring instruments of management such as energy and water-conservative cropping systems.
Experience and education must talk more to each other. ACWADAM, has been able to take experiences in the field and those from our training and capacity building, back into mainstream education. We have been actively involved in teaching groundwater at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) through the postgraduate course on Water Policy and Governance .
We were also involved in designing and conducting the Water Science and Policy course at the Shiv Nadar University. The University is now running a course on MA in Rural Management, to which I continue to contribute as Professor of Practice. Last year, I was also invited to join the ADCPS at IIT (Bombay) by Prof. NC Narayanan who has followed our work on groundwater and many of my policy engagements with great interest. I am trying my best to contribute to Policy Studies and Research as a visiting professor at the Centre at IIT(B).
The role of Civil Society will also need to change by incorporating more substantive inclusion of transdisciplinary science in water related work. NGOs will also need to reinvent themselves by moving out of the umbrellas of individuals and becoming more professional as institutions, wherein they are able to document the evidences from their experiences for improved communication.
I still spend a large part of my time at ACWADAM, where we are trying to bring in stronger elements of transdisciplinary science into the science of groundwater hydrology. The Oklahoma University Water Prize, I firmly believe, is really a consequence of the work that our teams were able to undertake in different parts of India and the partnerships and collaborations we were able to forge with many different organisations. I am perhaps only a face of that work.
Having being named for this award, I am continually reminded and humbled by the fact that we have but scratched the surface where groundwater problems in India are concerned. There is an urgent need for larger and healthier interactions, partnerships and collaborations in scaling up the incremental changes in human behaviour that lead to collective action on managing resources like groundwater. A much larger scale of such changes is necessary to make a difference in protecting, managing and governing the resource of groundwater.
Hence, the larger vision for groundwater must be to forge more partnerships between government, civil society and academia, continually bearing in mind that the ultimate goal is to balance the needs derived from natural resources by forging a balance between ecological and social needs.
Finally, the larger question that remains in scaling PGWM and PSSM is how to enable communities to acknowledge groundwater as a shared resource, and catalyse decisions and actions on managing their aquifers and watersheds rather than sourcing and extracting from individual wells and bore wells. Caring for groundwater is incomplete without the idea of sharing groundwater resources, while sharing of resources has the inherent emotion of caring for them.
We must remember that our entire socio-ecological system depends on such resources. Collective management of groundwater may seem a utopian dream at the moment, but one will continue to endeavour in pursuing it as it is perhaps the only way that a society like India may eventually democratise and decentralise the governance and management of an invisible resource like aquifers!
Finally, let me say that I have named only a few institutions and organisations to highlight a few of my ideas, thoughts and experiences. There are many who have contributed to this unique journey through advice, help, support and critique. You may need several pages to print the names of individuals and organisations that have contributed in different ways to this journey. All that I can offer now is a sincere ‘thank you’ to all those who have contributed to this journey and hope that such support continues into the future.