New Delhi, May 23 -- Early this year, I had visited a few coastal villages in Odisha, close on the heels of another visit to some hamlets on the fringes of Sri City, the integrated business city of Andhra Pradesh. Far from the fast-paced world - literally for the Odisha villages, and figuratively for the ones near Sri City - both these places had a common thread uniting them: lack of water. A narrative that is so often heard that it now struggles to evoke any emotion in the larger populace, difficulty in access to water is a harsh reality that a large section of the Indian population, as well as in other countries of South Asia, both rural and urban, are still living with.

Recall that all-too-common imagery of a village belle walking wit...