The succession of violent cyclones that devastated eastern India during the monsoons of 1999 and 2000, in which tens of thousands died and millions were left homeless, somewhat eclipsed a less dramatic, but no less serious, climate crisis in India's northwest. Since the failure of the 1997 rains, drought has brought the parched desert regions of Rajasthan to their knees. Millions of farmers have lost cattle and crops, while in the blazing summer of 2000, when temperatures in the Thar soared to well above 50 degrees for weeks on end, many wells ran dry, forcing streams of desperate rural poor to flee the worst affected areas.

 

Unprepared for the scale of the disaster, the government was slow to respond. But after pictures of emaciated Rajasthani refugees and bony cattle lying dead by the roadside hit the newspapers, Prime Minister Vajpayee made a televised appeal for public donations, and later announced a Rs9.5 billion (£138 million) relief package: trainloads of fodder were dispatched to feed starving animals, along with convoys of subsidized grain, and tankers of water.

Meanwhile, the Indian drought was starting to make international headlines. Commentators evinced amazement that the country Microsoft had just selected to site its multimillion-dollar Hi-Tech City, which boasted the world's largest film industry, and which had recently developed its own nuclear bomb, was incapable of providing adequate water supplies for an estimated fifty million farmers.

What few picked up on, however, was that the Indian government's water policies were, after the failure of the rains, among the main causes of shortages. Since Independence, huge dam and canal projects have been pushed forward by successive administrations to irrigate the dry regions. For the twelve years after 1985, when rainfall levels were good, these lived up to expectations, but when the monsoons failed in the late 1990s, the expensive irrigation network was found wanting.

Rajasthan is no stranger to drought. In the past, however, villagers would capture what little rain fell in the desert, maintaining ancient, stone-lined wells in pond bottoms and river beds. But the advent of seemingly inexhaustible supplies of piped water put paid to this traditional knowledge. Instead of remaining self-reliant, people relaxed their traditionally frugal attitude to water and relied on the government to meet their needs. Thus, when the drought started to bite, poor farmers had to rely on supplies tanked in by private hauliers. To pay for it, they borrowed money at usurious rates from the local landowners, putting up their fields and homes as security - which is why so many thousands ended up on the road in 2000.

The Indian government's relief efforts may have alleviated the worst of the suffering, but its long-term policies, determined more by the demands of big business and corrupt officialdom than the basic needs of Rajasthan's 23,400 drought-prone villages, look hopelessly inadequate under the relentlessly cloudless skies of the Thar.