Borrowed Ground: India’s Cities Are Sinking Without Anyone Noticing

By UNU-INWEH

India's cities are sinking, slowly and silently. The governance frameworks to stop it exist on paper. They just haven't reached the ground yet.

Each disaster is defined by its pace. Earthquakes come within seconds, floods in hours, drought in months. Subsidence takes years to show. It starts showing in millimetres and keeps exacerbating from thereon, and this entire process happens so slowly that when it manifests itself through cracks in walls and roads and flooded basements, the ground responsible for it is no longer there. This is already happening in places as far apart as Jakarta and Mexico City. And although slower in India, it has already begun to show.

The Cities That Forgot They Were Standing On Water

Subsidence involves the slow movement or abrupt settlement of the ground. It happens whenever there is a loss of strength in the supporting material beneath the earth's surface due to overextraction of groundwater, resulting in the collapse and contraction of layers of rock or soil.

Mexico City and Jakarta are experiencing subsidence at a scale that can no longer be ignored.

These can be regarded as two of the most pronounced manifestations of subsidence worldwide. The reason for such widespread urban subsidence is human intervention along with certain geological features of the area.

The metropolitan area of Mexico City, estimated to have a population of over 22 million, is founded on a regional aquifer and is surrounded by highly compressible sediment deposited by the prehistoric Lake Texcoco. The other reason for subsidence in this city is the construction of heavy infrastructure on top of this weak foundation. NISAR data, collected between 2025 and 2026, shows that some areas within the city are sinking at a rate of more than 2 cm/month. 

The variations in elevation have affected the city’s structural integrity, as evidenced by the historical monuments that exist within it. The Angel of Independence monument is a good indication of this problem; since the monument was erected in 1910, 14 additional steps have been added as the area around the structure continues to sink while the structure remains unaffected due to its solid foundation. The same thing can be noted at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The subsidence rate in the metropolitan area of Jakarta, with an approximate population of 42 million, is higher than the average global sea-level rise. The use of InSAR and GPS reveals a subsidence rate ranging from 1 to 4 cm/year. Since Jakarta is a coastal city, this rate of rapid subsidence results in increased relative sea-level rise. Such conditions have even led to the relocation of Indonesia's capital from Jakarta to Nusantara in eastern Indonesia.

Both of these cities, especially Jakarta, serve as cautionary tales for fast-growing megacities in India, which are beginning to exhibit similar patterns.

Subsidence in India

This crisis has been documented in India as well, with researchers identifying 878 sq.km of urban land currently subsiding. Delhi records the highest subsidence rate of about 5 cm/year, followed by Chennai and Kolkata at around 1.6 cm/year. Bengaluru is safer because of the solid rock beneath the area. The overall rate of subsidence in Mumbai is relatively lower, but in some densely populated areas such as Dharavi, subsidence poses a major issue.

India has the right tools at different levels to handle the incoming crisis, but the lack of coordination remains a hurdle. The National Aquifer Mapping and Management Program (NAQUIM) is a scheme which helps the nation determine the presence of aquifers, along with the areas in which water flows. This scheme helps map nearly 25 lakh sq km of the country and thus identifies areas that have been overexploited, resulting in stress on water availability and making the area more susceptible to ground displacement. Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) is an organisation set up under the Environment Protection Act, 1986. CGWA works as the apex authority regarding the regulation and control of groundwater management in India. It curbs any reckless extraction through the issuance of No Objection Certificates (NOC).

Since water is a State subject, the Ministry of Jal Shakti provides the Model Groundwater Bill to help States create their own legal frameworks to curb indiscriminate extraction. The bill is intended to create a governance environment where groundwater rights are detached from land ownership, which remains a major hurdle in controlling over-extraction, as groundwater is seen as a private resource attached to a specific piece of land, and thus, groundwater is often exploited as a common pool resource with low excludability.

The Implementation Gaps 

Despite these effective plans, institutional failure, financial inadequacy, and lack of appropriate regulations might still lead to a risk of land subsidence. According to the CAG report from 2021, actual expenditures for groundwater management programs were usually much lower than the authorised expenditures, a case in point being that only 27% of funds were used for implementation between 2012 and 2019. The CGWA has been accused of inadequate enforcement; for instance, in some cases, the projects proceeded to pump groundwater regardless of the expiry of NOCs. Incentives resulting from subsidised power in agriculture promote excessive exploitation, especially in Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, where extraction ratios exceed 100%, i.e., the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of recharge. At present, Indian policy regarding groundwater aims to prevent drought, while the geohazard of land subsidence remains largely ignored.

Groundwater management in urban areas is complicated due to the division of responsibilities among different departments, such as Water Supply, Public Health, and Housing, along with the overlapping nature of aquifers that cross jurisdictional boundaries. The National Building Code deals with soil stability in terms of the design and construction processes; however, it does not include the ground settlement effect in the long run, which occurs after construction is completed.

Since subsidence has not been formally recognised as a disaster, there are no official provisions about evacuation, relocation assistance, funding, or structural safety measures that would normally be covered after declaring it an NDMA-related disaster. Subsidence is also outside the scope of the National Mission on Sustainable Habitats 2021-30.

Residences built under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) are also not mandated to be built accounting for subsidence, as it has not been officially recognised as a disaster. As a consequence, the data on subsidence is not used to analyse flood risks. This leads to an extremely dangerous situation because relative sea level rise is underestimated in coastal cities, leading to permanent inundation.

Subsidence is being addressed through measures to control groundwater, such as the Atal Bhujal

Yojana (ABHY) and NAQUIM. Groundwater policy currently comes under the purview of the Ministries of Jal Shakti, Agriculture, Energy, and Rural Development. The process of categorising it as a disaster would require a more integrated approach, with a transition from managing it as a resource depletion issue to an active emergency safety protocol. 

Who Is Actually Standing On This Ground

Sinking land and depleted aquifers in urban areas can lead to underlying social injustices, health hazards, and conflicts. Without a comprehensive policy of protection, areas such as Dharavi in

Mumbai sink at a rapid rate due to densely populated informal settlements and weak foundations. Vulnerable people living in similar conditions (for example, 18 per cent of Delhi's population) do not get access to a regular supply of water, resulting in increased exploitation of underground water through borewells. Hence, this group unknowingly contributes to the sinking of their own dwellings. Such groups also have limited resources to fix their damaged homes.

Scientists predict that in the absence of any national efforts aimed at stabilising the water table and strictly regulating its use, the number of buildings considered extremely vulnerable to collapse is predicted to grow nearly tenfold, i.e., 23,000 in just 50 years from the current level of about 2,400. In light of such predictions, the situation can worsen, with whole neighbourhoods becoming unfit for habitation due to a combination of collapse and flooding.

Climate change catalyses the process by increasing the requirement for water, using groundwater as a safety net for an unstable supply. This leads to a vicious circle in which subsidence further exacerbates the dangers already posed by climate change. Groundwater is considered a natural safeguard in the event of climate change because it is relatively unaffected by weather-related factors compared to other water sources, such as rivers and lakes. The pollution or inconsistency of surface water due to floods and droughts leaves no option but to rely on groundwater to meet water demands. Droughts ushered by climate change have rendered surface reservoirs dry in places like Chennai.

Climate change may cause intense rains capable of recharging aquifers, but such recharge is not feasible in a heavily concretised environment in the urban areas. Furthermore, the effect of global warming on evapotranspiration leads to a reduction in the quantity of water available for recharge of the aquifer. This means that although the quantity of rainfall may increase due to global warming, the recharge in the aquifer can actually reduce as people use more water to cool down. 

What Needs to Happen

While land subsidence in India is evidently slower, it does not pose an immediate threat. But the looming water crisis, which is bound to intensify in the near future due to climate change and the burgeoning population of India, can accelerate it. 

One possible solution to the problem of subsiding land is through the management of water shortage. The example set by Tokyo in stopping subsidence has been hailed worldwide, having almost eliminated the phenomenon that led to portions of the city subsiding at up to 24 cm/year in the 1960s. The method used involves a thorough and multifaceted strategy, with emphasis on control, change, and recharge. Legislation such as the Industrial Water Law and the Building Water Law mandated structural requirements for wells, effectively banning new and existing wells that failed to meet specific criteria regarding outlet size and "strainer depth", i.e., the depth at which water is drawn. In 1970, TMG unified all municipal water services within its borders into one central organisation, making way for the huge transfer from individual wells to the publicly-managed surface water system. TMG also increased its application of water-permeable pavements, alongside preservation of the green spaces and agricultural land. Moreover, building owners were required to submit environmental plans that included reclaimed wastewater use or rainwater infiltration strategies. 

By combining these technical interventions with the political will to enforce them, Tokyo raised its water table from 58 meters below sea level in 1965 to just 6–10 meters below sea level by the early 2000s, effectively stabilising the ground. Interestingly, TMG did not opt for an abrupt shock through a blanket ban, but instead followed a phased approach. In this regard, industries and individuals were given ample time to switch to water-efficient devices, incorporate recycling facilities, and connect to the newly installed piped water system.

Another example is that of Dwarka, located in southwest Delhi. Similar to Tokyo, the city of Dwarka combated the problem of subsidence through a combination of stringent regulations and environmental practices undertaken by the authorities, which successfully transformed the location from subsidence-prone to experiencing local uplift. The residents, along with the governing bodies, also joined hands in reviving the historic 200-year-old water body referred to as 'Naya Jhod' in August 2015. This 10-million-litre-capacity water body serves as a major source of artificial recharge to the aquifer. The region was undergoing a subsidence rate of about 3.5 cm/year between 2014 and 2016. However, recent satellite data have indicated an uplifting rate of up to 1.5 cm/year in the same region.

Seeking inspiration from the cases of Tokyo and Dwarka, India needs to adopt a holistic preventive approach that transitions from reactive repairs to predictive resilience planning. Since over-extraction is the primary driver of subsidence in India, managing water shortage is crucial.

Implementing strict national groundwater legislation and usage caps, artificial recharge programs, periodic post-construction checks for ground deformation and foundation stress, and integrating subsidence data acquired using InSAR into urban zoning are some of the ways this hazard can be averted.

The ground does not declare its cessation of lending. It simply stops giving back. At some point between bore well permissions and building codes, between aquifers and urban planning maps, Indian cities are trading in their temporary need for water in exchange for a sustainable structure that will continue to function, with the section of victims being completely separate from that of the policymakers. This is not an environmental issue; it is one of governance. And governance, unlike groundwater, can still be recovered.

Written By: Ritika Singh Thakur

Edited By: Nilanjan Jha