How traditional water bodies can help India deal with looming water crisis

The Ministry of Jal Shakti was launched in May this year with the mandate to find solutions to India's escalating water crisis

Back in my father’s ancestral house in a village in Punjab’s Amritsar district, there was an old well that served the needs of two extended families. My father’s uncles, aunts and their children and grandchildren, my uncles, aunts and their kids, the family that lived next door, all drew water from it for bathing, drinking, cooking, washing clothes. Even when piped water came to the village, the well remained in use. The taps would sometimes run dry; the well wouldn’t. So they never had to store water in buckets or drums the way we in the city needed to. As