Water has become a mirage for the Narmada Project oustees rehabilitated here from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, who agreed to give up their irrigated farms back home to ensure that the Sardar Sarovar Dam project became the lifeline of the water-starved people of Gujarat.

Climate change and reckless construction have dried up the "Water Bank' of the country

With the onset of summer and rise in mercury gastroenteritis has again struck the areas, which lack access to clean drinking water, with more than 100 patients reporting at the Nawabshah Medical College Hospital (NMCH) and other health centres during last 24 hours. On an average, 40-50 gastroenteritis patients report daily at the NMCH for a couple of days. A gastroenteritis patient complains of vomiting and diarrhoea or cramps.

The acute drinking water shortage and the failure of the door-to-door garbage collection scheme dominated the proceedings of the monthly meeting of the local Municipal Corporation (MC) today. The councillors demanded that residents should be provided adequate drinking water at least on alternate days. Expressing concern over the acute water scarcity in the capital most of the councillors demanded that concrete steps must be taken to provide relief to the people.

Though successive governments at the Centre and the State have adopted several ambitious schemes to supply safe drinking water to the people like

Three foreign water management experts have undertaken the responsibility of supplying drinking water to the Kathmandu valley from this week. Last week, Kathmandu Valley Drinking Water Limited appointed a General Manager and two Managing Directors on the recommendation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the chief contributor of the Melamchi Drinking Water Project. The team will be working for one-and-a-half years.

The scorching sun has been beating down on parched farmlands in Malda, sucking the waterbodies dry and causing the groundwater level to plummet. Officials in the district agriculture department fear huge crop losses if it does not rain in the next few days. The four blocks of Old Malda, Bamungola, Gajole and Habibpur are already facing severe drinking water shortage. Standing boro paddy and jute stalks are wilting in the searing heat.

Had the Gujarat State Water Supply and Sewerage Board (GSWSSB) repaired this leak, some 5,000 people in Surendranagar would have been going thirsty. Living on the outskirts of the town, it is a routine for women of this middle-class locality of Khann to spend hours standing by the leaking pipeline. And fights are common too. The pipeline supplies water from Dholi Dhaja dam to surrounding villages. If there was no leak, people here would have had to drink extremely brackish water from hand pumps.

Numerous localities in the city including Desi Mehamandari, Rajpura Colony and Factory Area have been facing an acute shortage of water for the last couple of weeks. Even though municipal corporation officials have been informed about the menace, they have apparently not seen it fit to ensure round-the-clock water supply. "On normal days water is supplied twice during the day

This is Dhirubhai Ambani's birthplace. Located right on the coast, it is one of the hundreds of villages along Gujarat's 1600-km coastline which have been inflicted by salinity of soil. Kukasvada, which has a population of 10,000, does not have sweet water wells. Villagers have stopped getting drinking water in the taps. The few rich families here purchase water from private tankers at Rs 350 per 1,000-litre. Others travel several kilometres to fetch water.