ater is sacred for most Indians. Many of our rivers are holy, and the holiest of them all is the River Ganges. Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges washes away their sins. And if their ashes are scattered on the river when they die, it will carry them straight to Heaven.

Many sick people also bathe in the Ganges. They believe that the River God will cure them. At Varanasi, one of the seven sacred Hindu cities in India, over a million pilgrims come every year to bathe in the Ganges or to scatter the ashes of loved ones on the river.

In Hindu myths, the water God is called Varuna, a fair-skinned man riding a monster fish called a makara which has the legs and head of an antelope. He and his wife Varuni sit on thrones of diamonds. They hold court over the gods and goddesses of the different rivers, lakes and natural springs.

All this shows the vital importance of water to all aspects of life in India.

Too much of it causes terror when the floods, which follow the monsoon rains every year in Bengal and Bangladesh, are too high. But too little also causes hardship, for instance for those who live in the deserts of Rajasthan.

And for almost all Indians, we increasingly pollute our sacred waters. A recent league table of water cleanliness put India 120th out of 122 countries. All over India, we use our rivers to take away untreated sewage and waste from factories. Around 900 million litres of raw sewage are dumped in the Holy Ganges alone every day. Sewage has turned some of our most beautiful lakes into a mass of stinking algae. Even our springs and wells are sometimes filthy.

Waterborne diseases cause millions of deaths every year in India. Nearly half of the people admitted to hospital are suffering from waterborne diseases, like typhoid, cholera, hepatitis and dysentery. The economic cost to our country of all this illness must be staggering.