“India is suffering from the worst water crisis in its history and millions of lives and livelihoods are under threat,” warns a report released yesterday by NITI Aayog, the Indian government think tank. The report goes on to add that in just two years, Bengaluru and 20 other Indian cities, including Hyderabad and even India’s capital, New Delhi, will reach Day Zero—when every last drop of water dries up. That’s right, by 2020, 21 Indian cities will likely run out of groundwater.

The shortage will trigger a nationwide health crisis, the report states. “600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress and about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water,” it says. Some of NITI Aayog’s proposed changes include incentives for those organisations or communities that achieve their groundwater restoration targets; consumption-based tariffs and state government-imposed limitations on private groundwater access to ensure sustainable usage in cities.

This isn’t the first warning. A few months ago, the BBC reported on Bengaluru’s water crisis, stating that the IT capital of India would run out of water. While some experts are of the view that the Day Zero warning is alarmist, they agree that the situation is untenable and in need of a massive overhaul. Simply put, for the kind of population we have, we don’t have enough management authority personnel to actually enforce all the rules and plans that might be made.

Parts of the country are already seeing signs of a crisis. Earlier this month, favourite summer hill-station Shimla ran out of water. Locals had to queue up at the Mall Road and at other public taps for a bucket of water. With no water to cook, eat or bathe, several hotels started refusing tourists, and locals launched a campaign asking travellers to stay away. Read more here.