Nowhere is the need for water more acute than in rural India where 60 percent of its population lives and where water shortages mean shrivelled crops and dried-up wells, endangering lives and livestock.

"Water in rural areas is linked to livelihood. It's as simple as that," says Sumita Dasgupta, a water expert from New Delhi's Centre for Science and Environment.

With 20 percent of the world's population, India must meet its water needs with just five percent of the globe's available supply that is dwindling each year, says Maggie Black, a British water expert and co-author of "Water, a Matter of Life and Health".

"The strain is felt throughout India's towns and cities," says Black. But in those parts of rural India prone to drought "if streams and wells dry up, life itself is threatened".

The bitter irony is that large swathes of the east and northeast are flooded annually, killings hundreds and displacing millions, but grandiose river linking schemes that would relocate the water to where it is needed the most touted by a succession of Indian leaders have yet to reach the drawing board.

The situation has been exacerbated by what seemed like a great idea at the time to meet India's burgeoning water needs -- drilling deep into the earth to get to supplies far below the ground.

The programme, begun in the 1960s, was at first a great success and revolutionised access to water in the hard rock areas which make up four-fifths of India's landmass, bringing supplies to millions of households.

But the success also bred abuse as high-speed drilling technology, spurred by free power to farmers given by vote-hungry politicians, was used for irrigation for crops needed to feed India's ever-growing population and a focus on water-thirsty cash crops.

"The emphasis on mass irrigation set India on the path of unsustainable water resources management," says Black.

Now some 70 percent of India's irrigation water and 80 percent of its domestic water supplies come from groundwater rather than from surface water, according to the World Bank.

In a report late last year, the Bank said that India has no proper water management system, its groundwater is disappearing and river bodies are turning into sewers.

"Estimates reveal that by 2020, India's demand for water will exceed supply," it said.

The Centre for Science and Environment said in parts of New Delhi the groundwater level was dropping by 10 meters (33 feet) each year.

"The monsoon not only fills rivers and streams but as rainfall seeps into the soil it recharges the underground aquifers," says Black. But "the exploitation of the resource has taken place at a speed which does not allow time for the water table to recoup its losses".

Where once a depth of 10 metres (33 feet) was enough for a plentiful supply, a depth of 80 to 100 metres may now be needed. In many areas the uptake of groundwater has crossed the limit imposed by natural rates of renewal.

"In many parts of the country, it (the water problem) is now irreversible," says Rupert Talbot, a water consultant with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "You can go to parts where they are drilling so deep that they are mining fossil water that is 20,000 years old. It will never be recharged (by rains)."

In thirsty states such as Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, water trains regularly travel during the dry season, carrying water from less drought-prone regions. The experts say the future looks even scarier.

In 1998 when a World Bank water adviser, John Briscoe, travelled to Rajasthan, he found that 40 of the 240 groundwater blocks could not be replenished by the monsoon. By 2005, that number had more than tripled to 140.

Within around 10 years, the annual availablility of freshwater per head in India is expected to fall below 1,700 cubic metres -- considered to be a sign of "water stress".

by 2025 it is seen falling below 1,000 cubic meters -- the level used to describe water scarcity, Black says.

"The groundwater sitution is very critical," says Ashok Jaitley, a water expert at the non-profit Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi.

The serious groundwater depletion has had alarming outcomes for water quality, causing countless deaths.

The Indian government has repeatedly committed itself to the provision of "safe water and sanitation" but the question is how to achieve it.

The World Bank report says there is still "widespread complacency" in government circles about the water situation.

"Water was traditionally plentiful, but now we have to think about water as scarce resource," says Jaitley.

UNICEF's Talbot advises a multi-pronged approach to tackle the crisis.

"There must be enforced legislation to control the water uptake," he says, while noting such a move would be "politically a hot potato".

"There should also be greater awareness at the community level and it should be made a national mission to introduce rain water harvesting," Talbot says.

"People have believed water goes on forever but that's not the case," he says. "If people fail to act the water runs out."

related report

Palestinians Losers In Mideast Water War
by Isabelle Ligner Nazlet Isa, West Bank (AFP) Mar 20 - Israel's vast separation barrier slices Nazlet Isa off from one of the richest water sources in the arid northern West Bank where the fight for water is a fight for survival.

Israel is believed to monopolise around 75 percent of Palestinian water resources in a region where rainfall is infrequent and water a strategic asset.

In the agriculture-dependent Palestinian territories, hemmed in by Jewish settlements, the lack of resources causes havoc for farmers, while pollution and inadequate waste disposal create manifold sanitation and health problems.

In the northern West Bank town of Nazlet Isa, giant concrete slabs 10 metres (33 feet) high -- lambasted as an apartheid wall by the Palestinians -- have left six homes stranded on the Israeli side along with the rich underground aquifer.

A special system of pipes to access the water was finally built with Israeli permission but immediate access and control has passed into other hands.

"The route of the wall matches that of water resources, the latter being conveniently located on the Israeli side," said Elisabeth Sime, director of aid organisation CARE International, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The Palestinians are adamant that the wall -- which they see anyway as a land grab designed to delimit the borders of their promised future state -- was built deliberately to siphon off the aquifer.

Israel says it was built for security reasons to prevent suicide bombers infiltrating Israel or Jewish settlements.

"With the wall, the Israelis clearly sought to commandeer water resources," charges Hind Khury, a former Palestinian cabinet minister responsible for Jerusalem and now the government's representative in Paris.

"Without water, there is no life. Israeli policy has always been to push Palestinians into the desert," he added.

Abdul Rahman Tamimi, director of the non-governmental Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), said the coincidence of the route of the wall with the layout of the region's aquifers was no accident.

"The wall cuts some communities off from their only source of water, prevents tanker trucks from getting around and puts up prices," he said.

In Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank, around 20 wells, or 30 percent of the town's resources, were lost because of the wall, Tamimi says.

While agriculture accounts for nearly a third of Palestinian gross domestic product, only five percent of Palestinian land is irrigated.

On the other hand, 70 percent of Israeli and Jewish settlement land is watered, even if agriculture amounts to barely two percent of Israeli GDP.

"The fact that Israel confiscates and overexploits water affects every sector of Palestinian economic life and causes problems for the chances of development in the region and therefore chances of peace," Tamimi said.

More than 220 communities in the West Bank -- around 320,000 people -- are unconnected to mains water.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are therefore forced to buy water from trucks -- an expense many can ill afford -- to supplement local supplies that often fall woefully short of requirements.

One such consumer is weather-beaten 76-year-old Nazmi Abdul Ghani. Clutching clumps of soil and turning to the heavens, the grandfather of 100 is desperate. "I can't go on like this. My land is parched and I'm ruined."

One of the doyens of the northern West Bank village of Saida, he uses expensive water tankers to irrigate his tomatoes, onions and potatoes.

"The Israelis stole our land and took our water," he rages.

In the small town of Attil, at least a third of the local drinking water is contaminated by sewage and pesticides. Nine-year-old Fatima, her eyes misted with fever, routinely falls sick.

Waste and faeces from neighbouring houses run down the hill and seep through the floors and walls of Fatima's home. They slowly eat away at its foundations and emit a hideous stench.

"I often get stomach ache. I throw up. It's the same for all the children here," she says looking feverishly at her mother Awa.

Doctor Hossam Madi says diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, fever, kidney failure, infection and dermatological problems blight most Palestinian children and persist into adulthood because of poor water supplies.

"The quality of water is getting worse and worse," said CARE's Sime.

"A high proportion of new-born babies die of water-born infections. In the long run, Israelis will be affected by the pollution of water in the Palestinian territories."

In villages such as Jalbun, household, agricultural and industrial waste from Israeli settlements speed up the process of water pollution.

Tamimi accuses some Israeli businessmen and settlers of dumping toxic waste on Palestinian land in an act of "environmental terrorism".

Water supply problems faced by Palestinians are unfortunately typical of those hoping to be dealt with at the World Water Forum, which opened in Mexico City on Thursday. The March 16-22 forum hopes to help shape global strategy to improve distribution and eradicate waste of the precious resource that increasingly leads to conflict.

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