Maharashtra is witnessing one of its worst water emergencies in years, with the government deploying 6,597 tankers to supply water to 5,243 villages and 11,293 hamlets. SANDEEP ASHAR spends a day with MH 09A 9646 and its driver as they travel 148 km to deliver water to some of the most parched villages of Palghar district. It’s 5 on a Wednesday morning and Jagannath Rupanwar, 50, has risen much before the sun. Driver of a tanker that supplies water to villages in Mokhada, a tehsil in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, he washes the vehicle, fixes two 40-foot-long pipes on top of the tanker, recites a quick prayer, and by 5.45 am, has hit the road for his first trip of the day — a 40-km journey to Dhamodi village from the Mokhada junction, where Rupanwar has spent the night, stretched out on a thin mattress on the roof of the driver’s cabin of the truck. Rupanwar says it will take him about two hours to get to Dhamodi, a village on the Maharashtra-Gujarat border. “The area is hill...