Whenever, a ban was proposed on new tubewells there was an increase in drilling in order to get them registered before the deadline (Figure 4).
Thus passing laws and erecting administrative barriers does not always work unless social and economic realities are taken into account (Sandoval,2004).
Indeed in the early 2000s a move to withdraw unused portions of groundwater quotas encouraged farmers to pump more groundwater than they would otherwise have, lest they lose their quota (Luis Marin, personal communication, 2005).