Alwar's johads and the groundwater beneath them

A johad is a crescent-shaped dam of earth and rock that holds monsoon runoff long enough for it to soak into the ground.¹ In Alwar district, Rajasthan, many had silted up and been abandoned by the 1980s, and villages had turned to diesel tube wells that went deeper as the water table fell.¹ In 1985 workers from the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS) arrived, and a village elder in Gopalpura, Mangu Patel, told them the need was water. They dug out one johad; after the 1986 monsoon a long-dry well nearby flowed again.¹ By 1996 groundwater in Gopalpura stood on average 22 feet below the surface instead of 45, and all the wells had water.¹ In 1990 villagers in Bhaonta-Kolyala built a dam across the dry bed of the Arvari River, others followed, and the river ran all year from the mid 1990s (1995 in one account, 1994 in another).¹ When the state fisheries department sold fishing rights on it, the villages formed the Arvari Sansad.¹ This river parliament has no legal standing; it first met in January 1999 and adopted its own constitution.^1,6 Accounts of its founding give 34 villages and 70.^1,6 TBS counts 402 structures in the Arvari catchment by 2018 and about 13,800 across Rajasthan.^2,3

The district as a whole tells a different story. In each of the Central Ground Water Board's assessments that TerraSetu compiles from 2009 to 2025, Alwar pumped more than its annual extractable groundwater.⁷ It drew 167% of it in 2009, 209% in 2020 and 182% in 2025, with about 86% going to irrigation.⁷ A very wet 2024 monsoon raised the district's water levels by 9.87 metres between the pre- and post-monsoon readings, in figures the state's Groundwater Department called preliminary.⁸ Studies of the Arvari found that only about 7% of rainfall was recharged through the structures,⁴ and that past a certain number, more structures stop adding to groundwater while still reducing streamflow.⁵

Who needs an answer

• Village councils (gram sabhas) deciding whether to desilt, rebuild or add structures, and how much land to irrigate from the water they bring back.
• The Arvari Sansad and similar river parliaments, making rules for many villages that share one aquifer and one stream.
• Villages and reservoirs downstream, whose streamflow falls once structures upstream pass the point where they add to groundwater.
• The Rajasthan Ground Water Authority, set up under a 2025 act that takes effect on a date the state notifies, and the district committee the act gives Alwar to draw up a groundwater plan. Anyone pumping must seek the Authority's permission unless the state exempts the use, and the Authority recommends a tariff.^10,11
• Courts and the state deciding how much of the Aravalli hills to protect from mining, since mining has removed hills in Alwar, and in December 2025 the Supreme Court put on hold the definition of an Aravalli hill it had accepted a month before.^9,12
• Planners of piped surface water: the Ram Jal Setu link project includes a feeder to Jaisamand in Alwar.¹⁴

The domains it chains

Monsoon rain runs off the hills carrying silt. Water held in johads seeps down, though part stays in the soil or spreads sideways through the aquifer instead of raising the water table beneath. Pumps lift it for wheat, mustard and drinking water. Forest on the hills slows erosion and keeps the johads from filling, while mining removes hills altogether. Village councils do the digging and set the rules, and when wells fail people leave for the cities, coming back when the water does.

What a twin should let people try

• Where to build: which sites in a village's catchment recharge the wells people use, and when a new structure only shifts water away from a neighbour or the river.
• How much to irrigate: for a given number of johads, how large an irrigated area the aquifer can carry through a run of dry years, the trade-off the Arvari studies found.
• Rules: what village or river-parliament limits on crops and pumping would do to well levels, compared with metering and tariffs.
• Wet years and dry: how long a gain like 2024's lasts if pumping stays where it is.
• Imported water: whether canal water arriving at Jaisamand eases pumping in nearby blocks or lets irrigation grow.
• Hills: what losing low hills to mining would do to runoff and recharge in a catchment like the Arvari's.

Where to start

The Glendenning and Vervoort papers describe a daily water-balance model of the Arvari catchment, built from seven monitored structures and 29 dug wells.^4,5 For the Arvari and eight other rivers it has worked on, TBS publishes the catchment area, coordinates and number of structures built.³ The Central Ground Water Board's yearly assessments give the stage of extraction for each district,^7,13 and the Rajasthan Groundwater Department publishes pre- and post-monsoon water levels.⁸ A land-cover map from Copernicus can show forest and farmland changing around each village, and InVEST can compare land plans for their effect on water. Villagers know which wells ran dry and when, a record a model can be tested against.