India suffers severe drought

By Daniel Lak in Delhi

Millions of people across north and west India are facing acute shortages of food and drinking water as the worst drought to hit the area in a century continues.

In the worst-hit states, Gujarat and Rajasthan, at least six million people are reported to be affected.

The authorities in several Indian states are having to send water tankers to some villages because wells have completely dried up.

Six million people are believed to be affected

This drought is hitting areas of India that are already among the driest in the country. The annual monsoon rains, crucial to replenish groundwater and wells, were not adequate last year or the year before.

Indian newspapers have been showing dramatic photographs of women and children being lowered into dry wells to dig for water in the mud at the bottom of the shaft.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has visited the worst-hit areas and ordered emergency relief.

Water riot

So far government action has taken the form of fleets of water tankers fanning out across the desert areas of western India.

There are few reports so far of casualties blamed directly on the drought, although large numbers of cattle have died.

Several people were killed recently when police fired live ammunition at a rioting crowd that had blocked a highway to press demands for a water-tanker.

Livestock losses and the failure of crops will plunge people in these already poor areas into irredeemable poverty, requiring long-term aid and assistance.

Conservationists say the drought underlines the need for urgent water conservation measures across the entire country, including making wealthy farmers pay for irrigation that many of them now get for free.

In the coming years, they say, water could become India's scarcest natural resource.