In Alirajpur, it’s a long walk to the water
Once living next to the abundant waters of the Narmada, displaced residents in Sugat and Jhandana now struggle to fill their pots
August 22, 2025 | Rohit J
T
SANGUR, PUNJAB
|FRI, JUL 27, 2018
A parched and thirsty countryside
Water scarcity in rural India is driven by factors natural and human – low rainfall, drought, depleting groundwater, and also policy, poor irrigation, big dams, borewells, unequal distribution and deprivation. It has destroyed crops, increased indebtedness, forced migration and inflicted disease. Here are PARI's stories on an unprecedented water crisis that will gradually become a crisis for the entire country
Author
In Marathwada: ‘A person dies but debt doesn’t’
Sanjeevani Bedage struggles to get a pension from a Maharashtra government scheme five years after first seeking it, even while repaying a huge loan taken by her late husband from a private moneylender
August 22, 2025 | Ira Deulgaonkar
Water: simply a matter of caste
Access to the village handpump in Palamu, Jharkhand is not for everyone, definitely not if you are a Musahar Dalit. It's not just water, even access to state rations and jobs is a challenge
April 05, 2025 | Ashwini Kumar Shukla
The water tanker
Access to the village handpump in Palamu, Jharkhand is not for everyone, definitely not if you are a Musahar Dalit. It's not just water, even access to state rations and jobs is a challenge
December 25, 2024 | Urja
The search for water
In Satara district of Maharashtra, a film on the acute water crisis
August 13, 2024 | Achyutanand Dwivedi and Prabhat Sinha
Water: not any drop to drink
As summer advances, there is fear and apprehension about the availability of water, especially in rural India. On March 22, World Water Day, PARI presents the many inequalities and injustices in access to clean drinking water – a basic right, but not for everyone
March 22, 2024 | PARI Team
Kolhapur district's water crisis
In Maharashtra's Uchgaon village, groundwater levels have dropped sharply. A short film
July 7, 2023 | Jaysing Chavan
Walking the thin line for water in Jhabua
July 21, 2021 | P. Sainath
Fetching water with Dali and her donkey
Every day, Dali Bada, an Adivasi wage labourer in Rajasthan’s water-scarce Udaipur district, undertakes exhausting downhill and uphill treks with her donkey to bring water for her family
November 20, 2019 | Sramana Sabnam
‘Clean water is a luxury we cannot afford’
A poor monsoon last year added to longer-term causes and dried up the water sources of Galtare early this year, forcing the women of this village in Palghar district to walk 25 kms a day to collect drinking water
June 28, 2019 | Shraddha Agarwal
The old man and the lonely village
S. Kandasamy is the solitary resident of Meenakshipuram in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district – a village of 1,135 people just eight years ago. Everyone else left, driven by an acute water crisis
June 26, 2019 | Kavitha Muralidharan
Prahlad's painful choice: cows or guavas?
An escalating drought in Marathwada has left even relatively big farmers struggling to stay afloat, trying to buy water for crops and cattle, and giving up when the money runs out, as it has for many in Beed district
June 3, 2019 | Jaideep Hardiker
A flood of assessments, a drought of humanity
Watch P. Sainath, Founder Editor, PARI, speak of a redefinition of drought that will hit farmers hard
November 15, 2018 | P. Sainath
Mandya's polls: farmers dry on water and hope
With barely 24 hours to go for voting, farmers in Karnataka’s Mandya district might vote in large numbers, but they remain unconvinced by the promises made by major political parties
May 11, 2018 | Vishaka George
Marathwada's troubled waters harm your bones
Recurring droughts in Marathwada have forced people in villages like Sawarkhed to drink fluoride-contaminated groundwater from borewells, which has inflicted debilitating fluorosis on many
January 12, 2018 | Parth M.N.
Memories of water
A steady decrease in rainfall, the switch to water-intensive cash crops and ever-increasing borewells have lowered the water table in Nagarur village of Anantapur, leaving farmers struggling to keep their crops alive
August 24, 2017 | Sahith M. and Rahul M.
Between life and death – a drought
The farmers of Thayanur village, Tamil Nadu, are facing a huge crisis that transcends the drought – and as the crisis deepens across the Cauvery delta, some have died due to shock, many have committed suicide
July 25, 2017 | Jaideep Hardikar
At a '100-day' site, the elderly battle drought
In Tamil Nadu's once-fertile Cauvery delta, a long and severe drought has wrecked farming. In many villages, the young have migrated for work and the elderly are doing backbreaking labour to earn some money
July 20, 2017 | Jaideep Hardikar
Distress and death in the delta
A long drought in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu has triggered a series of farmers' deaths due to heart attack. The state denies agrarian distress is the cause, but many families have a different story to tell
July 18, 2017 | Jaideep Hardikar
‘We don’t get water, you do’
Women and girls of the fishing community in Killabandar village, Palghar district, spend hours scraping the bottom of a well for drinking water, and resent that their region’s water is diverted to Mumbai city
July 6, 2017 | Samyukta Shastri
‘Even in the heat, there is some guilt if I drink the water…’
Shalubai Chavan of Latur spends eight hours every day filling water for her family; others spend three times the rate for water than beer factories in Aurangabad. And usually, it is women who do this backbreaking taskJune 29, 2017 | Parth M.N.
Wells of despair
An unregulated borewell economy thrives through the dry summers in Osmanabad district of Marathwada, with agents and rig owners cashing in on the desperation of farmers to find water at any depth, any cost
June 16, 2017 | Parth M.N.
Sinking wells, sunk in debt
Every day, a half-complete well reminds Karbhari Jadhav of Ganori village of his loans, mortgaged land, debts, and labour, because pay-offs and visits to government offices for years did not bring any sanctioned funds
April 26, 2017 | Parth M.N.
Up against a stone wall – the Wadars at Vasai
The Wadars of Maharashtra are stoneworkers who travel across India to restore monuments, many forced off their land by drought. At Vasai Fort north of Mumbai, they speak of their gruelling work and sense of despair
February 20, 2017 | Samyukta Shastri
The sacred waters of a tanker
Maharashtra’s water crisis continues even if media coverage of it dries up with the onset of the rains
June 24, 2016 | P. Sainath
The house that Phule's family built
Katgun village in Satara district, where Jyotiba Phule’s ancestral home survives, is not driven by his thirst for knowledge, education and justice. It is driven by thirst
June 7, 2016 | P. Sainath
Source of the rivers, scams of the rulers
Why rivers run dry while money floods the system in Maharashtra. A journey downstream the Krishna river
May 25, 2016 | P. Sainath
Drilling holes in the Thirst Economy
As the borewells go deeper in Maharashtra, there have been worrying instances of ‘paleo-historic storages’ being breached
April 7, 2016 | P. Sainath
The deep water crisis
Rig operators from Tamil Nadu are responding to a desperate demand from farmers across India, but with grave consequences for groundwater supplies
April 7, 2016 | P. Sainath
When water flows like money
If drought is making many in Osmanabad struggle for survival, it is also boosting a 24-hour trade that thrives on scarcity
April 7, 2016 | P. Sainath
Tankers and the economy of thirst
The water markets of Marathwada are booming, and in the town of Jalna alone, tanker owners can reach sales of close to Rs. 1 crore each day
April 6, 2016 | P. Sainath
How the other half dries
Water-guzzling crops, water parks, luxury pools – they are all connected to Maharashtra’s drying lakes and rivers. Who owns or controls this resource will be even more crucial now
December 20, 2014 | P. Sainath
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