This dataset quantifies the extent and annual rate of change in surface water area (SWA) in India's rivers and basins over a period of 30 years from 1991 to 2020. Visit Surface Water Trends - India for an interactive web interface to explore these results, and for additional data and information. It is derived from the Global Surface Water Explorer which maps terrestrial surface water globally using historical Landsat satellite imagery. (Pekel, J. et al., Nature 540, 418-422 (2016). (doi:10.1038/nature20584)). The data files contain zipped archives of shapefiles and CSV (comma separated values) files. Shapefiles are one for each season (dry, wet and permanent) and scale (river basin and reach) of our analysis, and contain annual trends in surface water area. To open and explore them in a GIS software (eg. QGIS), un-ZIP them and include them as vector datasets. CSV files are one for each scale (river basin and reach (transect)) of our analysis, and contain time series of surface water areas from 1991 to 2020. To open and explore them, for analysis or to explore in a table editing software, un-ZIP them and read them in. Refer to 00_README.txt for details on feature and table attributes in the files.