As groundwater wells run dry, the task of supplying Bangalore’s residents and office parks has been taken up by privately operated tanker trucks.
Credit: Mahesh Shantaram

On the outskirts of Bangalore one morning last summer, a sullen young man named Manjunath stood high atop a cocoa-colored 1,850-gallon tanker truck, waiting for its belly to fill with water. The source of the liquid was a bore well, a cylindrical metal shaft puncturing hundreds of feet down into the earth. An electric pump pulled the water up from the depths and into a concrete cistern; from there, a hose snaked across the mud and weeds and plugged into Manjunath’s truck. As the water gushed into the tanker, a muffled sound emerged, like rain on a tin-sheet roof.

Once the tank was full, Manjunath disconnected the hose, climbed down, and settled into the truck’s cab. Then he drove out through a web of newly tarred back streets in the suburb of Whitefield. He passed rows of half-finished buildings, still gray from raw cement, and […]