It is 5 a.m and the sun begins to rise over Sardana’s village in the heart of the Krishna basin, in Andhra Pradesh, India. The Krishna basin extends over an area of 260 thousand square kilometers, and straddles three states. With eight percent of the total geographical area of the country, it is India’s fourth largest river system.

Sardana wakes before the sun fully rises over the village in which she and her family live. Her husband and three children are still sleeping. She must get water for the

household’s cooking and washing purposes. If she is late there are long lines at the nearby well and the pump produces ever less water as the groundwater table keeps falling.

As she busies herself with the morning chores, Sardana reflects on how differently things are in her village from when she was a girl. Getting water was much easier, when even shallow wells had clean water. The river then was often spilling beyond its banks but now is easily crossed. And the water is black. It cannot be healthy to touch it -and drinking it is out of the question. Ever since the big dam was built upstream the river has been tamed – and the city has polluted what was left of it. Soon her husband will rise and head out to the fields where he grows rice and bananas. It is his turn for irrigation today. She will take her daughter to the vegetable plots where she is paying to irrigate with the black water pumped out of the river.

Dinesh, Sardana’s huband, is up. He is worried that the water will not come to their land today. In the twenty years since he has farmed here, the competition for water seems to grow every year. New dams have been built upstream. The city has paid to take water from the reservoir that also irrigates his land. And the bananas and sugarcane that have replaced much of the rice in the area are thirsty crops. As a result, the water he gets from the irrigation canal has reduced and hasbecome more uncertain. Some years back
he has therefore started to buy groundwater from a

neighbour with a well, but as the groundwater levels fall and the government increases the price of electricity and diesel, this water is becoming more and more expensive, when he can get it at all. There are rumours that the government plans to double the electricity prices – already there is service for only a number of hours per day. He has participated in several protest marches in the capital when earlier state governments had plans to increase the price of electricity that much; Dinesh is convinced that would be the end of farming in this area as he knows it. Water is becoming really scarce.

The population of Sardana’s village, and those around it, has probably doubled since she was young. People have no space left to build houses, the home gardens are getting smaller and smaller and the farms are getting smaller too. Sardana is lucky that she has her vegetabe plot and that she can get water there, even though it is expensive and it is wastewater. Given a choice, she would not eat vegetables grown with that water either. But she has to have vegetables. When she was young, people in this area were strictly vegetarian, now people are eating eggs and

every wedding has to have at least one or two non-veg dishes. Even her own children claim to like chicken! Well, not in her house, not for her – but she cannot help but wonder how that will change when her children are grown up. It has been hard enough to make a living for her family and to put her children to school. She is very proud of her son Shilp, who is now at university. But the last few years there seem to be more and more serious droughts. Two years ago her husband Disnesh was so desparate when the drought made his crop fail that he threatened to commit suicide. And now people talk about climate change – more and more droughts apparently. She is glad Shilp will not be a farmer but she will still have to find good husbands for her daughters. She does not have the money yet to let them marry anyone but other poor farmers from the village.

As water is getting scarce and more expensive, both Dinesh and Sardana have tried to use less. Dinesh has tried a new way of growing rice, called System of Rice Intensification. It means transplanting the rice plants early and letting them grow individually rather than as a small clump, then letting the soil fall dry and wetting it again. It is a lot of extra work. The first year he tried it produced more rice, but Dinesh does not have time to do all the weeding and finding reliable labor is hard. He is not sure whether to continue with it.

Sardana has had more success trying to use a drip irrigation kit for her vegetables, but that only works next to the house where they have clean water – on her wastewater irrigated plot the drip lines would be clogged too quickly. Still, on her small vegetable plot next to the house Sardana grew beautiful vegetables and they could go to the market earlier than most people and got a good price. Dinesh is considering whether to change some of his banana to other fruit trees and use drip irrigation. But it is hard to know which fruits will get a good price and for several years there would be very little income.

Sardana and Dinesh have always had access to irrigation water, but they have family living further upstream in the basin that farm on rainfed land. That has never been very profitable. They grew coarse grains such as sorghum, some chickpeas and then had some animals. But in recent years their family has been involved in rainwater harvesting – building small checkdamsparticularly. That has made a big difference. It allows them to irrigate their crops at least several times whenever there is a dry spell. Now they have
switched to more profitable crops – and because land is

cheaper there, they are doing quite well.Thousands of such checkdams have been built all over the upstream part of the basin. Dinesh wonders if that has anything to do with the hard time they have filling the reservoir from which he gets his irrigation water.

Many dams have been built in the Krishna basin over the last few decades. Sardana has heard that the river barely reaches the sea anymore. Below the city of Hyderabad, the river Musi, that flows into the Krishna, is really nothing more than an open sewer. It seems there really is no more water left, but the city is taking more and more water that used to go to farmers for irrigation. For farmers such as herself and Dinesh the only option seems to be to grow crops that use less water or to move to the city too. Maybe once Shilp
finishes university and finds a job there, they can move

there too.

The government says they can bring water from other river basins, where there is enough water. Linking all the rivers of the country and ending drought forever. Sardana is not sure that that would work, but it certainly would be very expensive and probably not bring water to her farm in time.

Sardana does not feel very well. She often has headaches and her bones ache. She knows that the wastewater she irrigates with cannot be very healthy. The drinking water they have comes from a deep well, that is probably safe. Although her sister thought that for many years too and now it appears there has been too much fluoride in the water of her well. Her children have discolored teeth and her sister has developed a form of arthritis it seems. Sardana worries shewill get that too. But what else can
they do? There does not seem to be any clean water

available anywhere, even the water some people buy from water sellers can give you diarrhea.

When Sardana was a child, her parents were poor but the water was clean. There were several lakes nearby where the children played and bathed. There were more birds too. Wild animals too and wild flowers everywhere. Not so long ago there was an environmental activist in the village who gave a lecture on the risk of all the poisons farmers use – pesticides and herbicides – and how these all end up in the water too. Sardana worries how she can protect the health of her children. She has heard that in the neigbouring village the people have jointly bought their own water treatment plant – maybe they should do that too.

Sardana and Dinesh have a long discussion that evening. Can they have a future here on this land? Can they use the water they have access to for a higher family income? For now it seems to them that the best thing is to get more income through Sardana’s vegetable farming and then use the money to convert some of the rice and bananas to fruit trees. Mango trees perhaps. With drip irrigation. Maybe Shilp can advise them what to do. If it does not work they may have to move tothe city, but they do not want to do that –
they are farmers after all, and their families have lived here

for generations.

Dinesh will talk to the village elders to see how they can have their own water treatment plant in the village. There is probably some organization that can help with that; they must ask how they have done that in the neighboring village. Today was a good day; the water came and Dinesh could irrigate his fields. They will have to take it day-by-day.