[VO] A watertanker delivers drinking water to this village once a week.
But it's rationed: only eight litres per person for seven days.
That's meant to cover household needs as well.
There are no other sources of water
anywhere nearby.
[Woman] The village water is salty.
We've had this problem for five years now.
This tank cost us 1100 rupees.
There is no water and everyone always needs it.
Children must drink.
We must wash these clothes.
There should be drinking water at least.
We have so many problems, but water is the major one.
Please do something now you're here!
If you do, we'll remember the Russians
who came and granted our wish.
[Man] The water has disappeared, actually, suddenly.
And it is not the one village or the two villages.
It is entire community.
[VO] This is one of thousands of Indian villages where water is the most precious commodity.
According to scientists, in just 15 years our planet will suffer a global crisis,
the most devastating one humankind has ever faced
Everyone will be affected.
H2WOE
THE PRICE OF WATER
[VO] Zhivi is carrying a week's supply of water supply on her head.
This is her share of the tanker.
JIVI RAM. KESHAV NAGAR VILLAGE, RAJASTHAN
[Jivi] I'm a widow. I have five kids and no one to help me.
If we need it, there's no way for us to find water on the surface.
We have no choice but to buy it.
A tank costs 900 rupees ($13).
I can't afford it. At best, I earn 200 rupees ($3).
How can I get by on so little?
How can I feed and clothe my children
if I spend 900 rupees on water alone?
GADA RAM. KESHAV NAGAR VILLAGE, RAJASTHAN
[Gada] Our lives depend on the tanker.
If it comes, we get water,
if not, we get none.
[VO] People living in India's hot and arid regions
figured out a way of collecting monsoon waters in specially created pools.
They use them until the next rainy season.
But the monsoon has been late for the past two years,
and all the water was used up a long time ago.
[Gada] Yes, we're facing this problem, but I don't know why.
People say different things,
I don't have a definite answer.
I'm also to blame, as I live here.
I haven't done anything to stop it,
so I feel guilty, too.
[VO] There used to be a pond here.
But the local farmers have built mounds around their fields,
to keep the water for themselves
rather than let it run into the common reservoir.
And so the reservoir,
which is used to serve the village all year round,
is now only half full.
By the time the hottest spring months arrive,
it's already dried out.
Jivi doesn't have anyone to look after her baby at home,
so she takes him to work with her.
With other women, she's working on deepening the pond,
to collect water once it finally rains.
They earn 120 rupees a day.
They need this money to buy water.
The villagers have been waiting for over a month
for the big rains to come
and for the free water to start falling from the skies,
but all in vain.
[Man] I think it's kind of heat stroke...
[Correspondent ]Do we have any water? [Woman] It's in the car.
[Man] You have a bottle. [Woman] Sorry, it's empty.
[Man] You keep it, you keep it [Correspondent] Yeah
[Correspondent] I feel a little better.
WATER WIVES
[Woman] I'll be honest with you.
I used to have a husband,
but he left me.
I cannot live all by myself.
That's why my ex and new husband
agreed to this new marriage.
My current husband is alive and well,
so we wear this dot on our foreheads.
Who is the first wife? The eldest?
Here's the first, the second, and the third.
It's because water must be carried from far away.
If she left at 6am for water,
she'd be back as late as 6pm.
So I thought one could do the housework,
while the other two could
work in the field and carry water.
[VO] Sakharam Bhagat's first wife was spending far too much time getting water,
and she didn't have any energy left to take care of the kids.
So he decided to take a second wife.
He reasoned that his first wife would be able to mind the children and keep house,
while the second would be free to fetch water.
But his second wife turned out to be a sickly woman
unfit for water duty,
so his plan failed.
This is how the third wife appeared on the scene.
Every morning,
the three wives set out on a water-fetching trip.
And it's a lengthy business.
The line is long
and it's best to be among the first to show up.
These days Bhagat's wives aren't as quick as they used to be,
so they have some queueing to do.
[Woman] Now it's their turn,
then those...
then it's us...
Once they're full, it'll be our turn.
The pond has little water, but more families now.
Before, with fewer people, there was enough.
Now there are many, that's why water is such a problem.
You see how long it takes a woman to fetch water.
[VO] Now that there's water in the house,
other chores can be dealt with.
[Man] In the last two years the situation has been really bad.
[Correspondent] Because of what? Because of no rain?
[Man] Because the rainfall is very low.
[Correspondent] Okay, maybe you can show us the man
who suffered a lot because of crop failure.
[Man] He is a farmer, his name's Sopan Patilba Dhurut
[Corresponden] When did he start growing orange trees?
He's been working hard for eight years.
And this year all his trees are gone.
SUN DRIED ORANGES
SOPAN PATILBA DHURUT KARANJGAO VILLAGE, MAHARASHTRA
[Sopan] For the first five years you don't get a crop.
As with children, you raise and take care of them.
As soon as they began to fruit, they got sick. All I can do is cry.
[Woman] He sleeps poorly.
He often wakes up and is always brooding.
I try to console him,
but when I go to sleep
on waking I see him sitting there, thinking.
We grew these trees but harvested no fruit.
It's like bringing up and then losing a child.
When the rains finally arrived in 2015,
they were too scarce to provide the state with water
In 2016, the monsoon season was late again.
But of course this isn't the only problem.
The "Green revolution" is what they called
the agricultural boom enjoyed by India several decades ago.
New land was cultivated, new technologies were introduced,
river flows were reversed, yielding outstanding crops.
But, apparently, now it's time to pay back for all this explosive growth.
Among other things, with shrinking water supplies.
Water shortages have become a national catastrophe.
[Man] There's a natural cycle but people ruined it.
They chopped down forests as far as the eye can see.
That's what triggered global warming.
It's cold in summer, rains in winter,
and it's hot when it should rain.
This is what it's like now.
Only mankind is to blame.
Everybody's wondering when the rain will finally come.
I believe the government's pulling our leg.
On TV they keep saying, 'There'll be rain today, rain tomorrow.'
They repeat it because it's state policy.
The papers keep writing that rain is on its way, too.
That's the game they're playing.
The rains are a month late.
What will happen if there's no rain for another two weeks?
Another week of no rain and I'll kill myself.
[Sopan] I've been buying water to irrigate
my plants for two months now.
I spent 15,000 rupees ($200) on water but I ran out.
I'm now 50,000 rupees ($750) in debt.
I must return the money.
Suicide is the only other option.
[Correspontent] 16 bodies were found here yesterday only one was identified.
Dogs will eat the rest.
RURAL SUICIDE
[Man] 50 years old, and this one was 34.
INDERJIT SINGH JAIJEE CHAIRMAN, BABA NANAK EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY, PUNJAB
[Inderjit] It’s not farmer suicides,
it’s rural suicides...
which affects the entire rural India.
And that is 67% of the Indian population.
In this part of Punjab, the primary reason is water.
Isn’t it paradoxical?
We have the rivers, we have all the water, but we can’t use it ourselves.
[VO] For many years Inderjit Singh Jaijee has been trying
to raise awareness of the suicide epidemic.
He talks to the families of the deceased, trying to get to the heart of the matter.
The Punjab used to be at the forefront of the nationÕs agriculture.
An irrigation system was built to bring water to the neighboring arid states.
As a result Punjab's watertable started to drop,
making farming increasingly difficult.
Local farmers would go bankrupt, borrow money and then,
as they were unable to pay their debts, they committed suicide.
[Inderjit] The primary responsibility for the suicide
is the loss of the river water to non-Riparian states.
Haryana, Delhi and mainly Rajasthan.
[VO] Relatives of the dead come to this small dam that separates the canal into three branches.
They are hoping to find the bodies of their loved ones in the water,
at least those of them who committed suicide by jumping into the canal.
ASHU MALIK DIVER
[Ashu] These cameras are for monitoring,
so I'll see if a body turns up.
Bodies always get caught here for at least a couple of minutes,
and the footage allows me to see
if they become stuck or drift further.
I upload images of the drowned to this site every day.
See how many there are? I'm constantly updating it.
In 70% of cases it's suicide.
[VO] Ashu Malik is a diver, but he only recovers the bodies of those whose relatives are ready to pay him.
It's a business.
Ashu doesn't work for the government.
If a body isn’t identified and there's no one to claim it, he drops it back into the water.
[Inderjit] Every day, 3-4 bodies come,
they lie scattered, dogs eat them.
They remain in the water, the water’s contaminated, the fields are contaminated.
The police don’t take them to the mortuary. They don’t remove them.
The police officers were saying “zero suicide”, no bodies.
The officers always said “no bodies over here”, and yet you saw the bodies.
So isn’t the government hiding the suicides?
[Inderjit ]Today in one day 5 bodies were here and 2 there. 7 bodies altogether.
In one day! And the police say not even one body here.
[VO] Singh has been trying to solve this problem all his life.
He has been arrested a number of times.
He even had to serve time in jail.
However, he hasn’t given up and continues to do everything in his power.
[Man] You can take just, try it. Very sweet, no contamination.
[Correspondent] Are you sure that it's ok? [Man] Yeah!
[Correspondent] I will be fine? [Man] Yeah!
Everybody drink this one.
Very sweet. Tasty!
[Correspondent] Yeah.
[Man] Be careful, not fall down.
THE GREAT THAR DESERT
[VO] One theory is that this land was once a savannah or even a forest,
but for many centuries people exploited the land so badly,
that the former abundance turned into a barren desert.
However, the people didn't quit this waterless scorched land,
but instead adapted to living here.
They figured out how to collect rainwater and make the supply last throughout the year.
And they lived like this for a long time.
But over the last decade everything has changed.
RAJENDRA KUMAR SENIOR PROGRAMME COORDINATOR GRAVIS
There's no water in the pipe.
It takes three hours to fill a tank,
then I take it to the villages.
[Rajendra] Because people are too dependent on the government,
they do not believe in themselves or their traditional systems.
The old systems, wisdom... people, they forget.
They do not believe in that.
'It's the government's work, not our job.'
You know, by the railway, how much can you supply?
[Man] Now it's a serious issue,
as we must travel 30-40 km to get water.
People have to spend everything they earn on water,
as you can't live without it.
[Man] I'm so, so thirsty.
[VO] Paradoxically, the irrigation channels dug under politicians’ orders eventually dried up.
The water towers built by the government aren't functioning.
And only the reservoirs constructed using ancient technologies are still, surprisingly, in use.
[Rajendra] This pond belongs to the community.
Everyone tries to get water from here.
If monsoon late, people not suffer, because they have water.
They use for domestic purpose.
Not for selling.
So people say, this is our water bank.
This water is very clean, for drinking. You try to check in laboratory –
no contamination, no biological, no chemical.
You see. This water is clean, it's very very clean.
You can drink. No problem.
BHAI KHAN GAREWARR VILLAGE, RAJASTHAN
[Bhai] This pond plays a vital role in the life of the village.
Because of it, water collected,
the land got enough water, and agriculture flourished.
People decided to move into this area.
Our house used to be the only one, now there's at least 100.
They used to be makeshift huts,
but now they're building permanent houses.
Now it's a whole village.
[Rajendra] This is a worldwide problem.
I was in the last days in Africa, Kenya and Malawi.
They have a lot of rains, twice a year,
long spell and shorter spell, but they’re also facing crisis.
Why don’t we think about the water?
So this is the natural things and we are going to waste water without using.
[VO] Through much of its history, humankind got by using water that fell from the sky.
But current technologies require water for irrigation, cooling and manufacturing.
The demand for fresh water has already exceeded supply.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has estimated
that in 15 years 47 percent of the world's population will suffer from water shortages.
India is one of the first countries to face this water crisis.