Ticking Water Bomb
Parched soil, dead cattle, young girls walking miles for a litre of muddy water and villagers digging up dried wells hoping to find a few more drops are a common sight in the eight districts of Maharashtra's Marathwada region. The region was declared drought hit in November 2018. Things have worsened since then. Residents of nearly 2,000 villages get water supply for half an hour once in six days. There are close to 2,050 water tankers but their arrival in villages leads to quarrels about who will get water first.
In Tamil Nadu, the state government has declared 24 districts, including Chennai, drought hit, apart from 38 other blocks in seven districts. Groundwater levels in some districts have dropped by an average of one metre from January.
Dying cattle, and fights over water are scenes that repeat themselves in various districts of Gujarat, Kerala, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. In a country of 1.3 billion people that is able to use only one fourth of the 4,000
