JOLARPET, India—Amid the green Yelagiri hills of southern India, the train inches along the tracks, carrying what has become precious cargo: drinking water-bound for Chennai, India’s parched Motor City.
Demand for water in the manufacturing and IT hub on the Bay of Bengal far outstrips supply, forcing authorities to take extreme and costly measures to serve the city’s 10 million people. And so, every day, the train sets out on a four-hour, 134-mile journey, its 50 tank cars carrying 660,000 gallons of water drawn from a dam on the Cauvery River.
