Growing wheat in north-west, rice in eastern states can reduce water crisis

While 42% of India's land area is currently facing a drought, 88.11% of Punjab's districts and 76.02% of Haryana's are drought-resilient, according to a 2018 study published in Journal of Hydrology

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