Monsoon this year has failed most of India, causing drought in even well-irrigated and rainfed areas. Ravleen Kaur reports how our food preferences are making us vulnerable to drought

Has our insatiable hunger for development and unquenchable thirst for water put us at the risk of running out of this resource. The answer is obvious if recent expert surveys that point to fast depleting ground water levels are to be believed.

International experts have called for urgent changes to the way water is used in farming throughout Asia.

Unsustainable water use in India is threatening agricultural production and raising the spectre of a major water crisis.

Groundwater is a primary source of fresh water in many parts of the world. Some regions are becoming overly dependent on it, consuming groundwater faster than it is naturally replenished and causing water tables to decline unremittingly. Indirect evidence suggests that this is the case in northwest India, but there has been no regional assessment of the rate of groundwater depletion.

For millennia, India used surface storage and gravity flow to water crops. During the last 40 years, however, India has witnessed a decline in gravity-flow irrigation and the rise of a booming