Situating socio-hydrogeology: Towards a transdisciplinary understanding of groundwater monitoring practices in western India

Abstract With an increasing emphasis on participatory and citizen-led knowledge initiatives for addressing challenges in improving groundwater governance, socio-hydrogeology is well poised to reveal the complex groundwater–society relationships. Socio-hydrogeological initiatives, while gaining traction among groundwater scholars and practitioners, are embedded in positivist, quantitative approaches, led by hydrogeologists, rarely integrating insights from critical social sciences. Drawing on recent work in critical water studies and socio-hydrology, this paper calls for ‘situating’ socio-hydrogeology by advancing a transdisciplinary understanding of groundwater monitoring practices in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. The paper is based upon a qualitative inquiry into practices of groundwater knowledge production with groundwater officials and farming communities. The paper’s findings demonstrate the interplay and integration between scientific practices of groundwater monitoring and alternative, place-based ways of knowing groundwater. It underlines the value of ‘being in the field’ over technological, distant forms of monitoring that are being mobilised by international, national and regional agencies. It reveals how groundwater officials navigate challenges in everyday practices of monitoring to move ‘beyond hydrogeology’—involving decisions made ‘off the record’ that are shaped by concerns of avoiding bureaucratic burdens. Lastly, groundwater understanding in farming communities is embedded in their cultural and material relationships with groundwater and agriculture, thus offering alternative forms of knowing groundwater. Collectively, these findings advance a case for situating socio-hydrogeology towards a grounded, place-based transdisciplinary enterprise that informs just transformations for groundwater sustainability.