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Water Budgeting in Aspirational Blocks

  • 24 Nov 2025

On 19th November 2025, NITI Aayog released a report on “Water Budgeting in Aspirational Blocks”, marking a significant effort to take forward local water budgeting for effective water management.

  • The report has been prepared in collaboration with GIZ India, drawing on field-level assessments and data inputs from multiple institutions.
  • The report aligns with the Prime Minister’s vision for Viksit Bharat@2047, emphasising the necessity for sustainable and equitable water security across diverse landscapes of India.

Key Highlights

Water Budgeting

  • According to NITI Aayog, water budgeting is a structured approach to:
    • Estimate water demand across key sectors – domestic (human), livestock, agriculture and industry.
    • Map water supply from multiple sources – rainfall runoff, surface water, groundwater and inter-basin transfers.
    • Compare demand and supply to identify gaps, stress points and surplus pockets.
    • This diagnostic view at block level is intended to shift administrations from reactive crisis-management to proactive, planned water governance.

Varuni App

  • The water budgeting exercise is anchored in Varuni, a web-based platform that aggregates field data and secondary datasets to generate block-level water budgets.
  • By using Varuni, local officials can visualise water availability, explore interventions (such as demand management, recharge, storage or crop diversification) and monitor progress over time.

Focus on Aspirational Blocks

  • The 18 blocks covered in the study belong to the Aspirational Blocks Programme (ABP) under NITI Aayog, which extends the logic of the Aspirational Districts Programme to harder-to-reach blocks with multidimensional development gaps.