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Mumbai: Shifting the major chunk of rice production to India’s central and eastern states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, while encouraging wheat cultivation through sustainable irrigation in the rice-growing regions of Punjab and Haryana, could help India prevent an impending water crisis by 2030, according to a 2018 study by the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD) and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). Water demand by 2030 is projected to be twice the available supply, a WaterAid India report from March 2019 showed.
Inefficient cropping patterns have impacted groundwater reserves, that have provided for roughly 84% of the irrigated area added in the last four decades, said the NABARD and ICRIER study
