India must prioritize the needs of its thirsty cities before the rest

livemint.com:

At the time Egypt’s pyramids were being constructed, one of the cradles of global civilization emerged the Indus Valley around the borders of Pakistan and India. Its grid-planned cities produced sewerage networks, delicate artworks and an undeciphered writing system. Then, a 900-year drought [is thought to have] emptied its urban areas and sent its population back to a simpler, poorer village life on the plains of the River Ganga.

Something grimly similar is happening right now. Tech professionals are leaving India’s IT hub of Bengaluru amid an intensifying drought that has gripped the city as it sweats through another torrid pre-monsoon season, The Deccan Herald reported this month. More than half of the wells the city depends on for groundwater have dried up after failed rains last year, leaving businesses and citizens dependent on trucked-in water tankers.

In neighbouring Kerala—which catches much of the monsoon rainfall before it reaches inland stretches of Karnataka—a minister has written to Bengaluru’s companies, suggesting they relocate because “water is not an issue at all" in his state, The Times of India reported. That seems in poor taste in southern India, where fights over the distribution of river flows between parched states have gone on for decades. These pressures are only going to grow as populations rise and climate change makes the cycles of drought and monsoon more pronounced.