A broken clock is right twice a day. Extensive irrigation from groundwater, especially from "fossil" aquifers (water veins that are not replenished by surface water infiltration) is a shortsighted approach with long term consequences. As the water table drops, only those with deeper equipment will be able to access water. Back in PA, a bottled water company tapped into a shallow aquifer and forced all of the nearby homes in a few mile radius to drill new wells or not have running water. In the American southwest, they're tapping into the aquifers because they've muched up surface water collection so bad that they're nearly always in a drought.

My guess is these pumps in India are primarily going to irrigate commodity row-crops for sale in global markets, rather than for feeding the local communities around them. Meanwhile, Andrew Millison and Geoff Lawton and others are greening deserts with minor, hand-created earthworks to capture and retain what surface water there is.

I'm not for starving people, I'm also not for starving these same people's grandkids by using fiat-powered extractionary agriculture now at the expense of future generations.