One of the key features of agricultural development in the last five decades has been the intensive groundwater use in the Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) (Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh) and the Yellow River Basin (YRB) (China). For instance, in South Asia, groundwater irrigates almost 60 per cent of the net irrigated area, this figure is even higher in the north China plains, near 70 per cent. There is evidence to show that groundwater use for agriculture is still on the rise. Despite the growing significance of groundwater to agricultural growth, food security and rural livelihoods globally, the literature and understanding of the subject has remained small and lop-sided.Groundwater models and location-specific hydro-geological analyses abound; but larger issues of socio-economic impacts, political economy, groundwater institutions, property rights, and approaches to resource governance and management and specifically integrating science into management decisions have attracted surprisingly little scientific interest.This book is designed to at least partially address these information shortfalls and provide a consolidated and cross-disciplinary source of information and contemporary thinking on agricultural groundwater use and management in poverty-prone areas of Asia. The editors and contributors are drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines from both the physical and social sciences. Most of the authors are groundwater professionals working in groundwater or related departments in their respective countries and they bring in a wealth of location-specific experience and expertise. Most of the chapters in this book rely heavily on primary data collected by the authors in the course of an innovative, cross-coordinated and inter-disciplinary fieldwork exercise, covering areas across the regions that significantly depend on groundwater for agricultural livelihoods.