Villagers recruiting guards to protect precious water wells

When five wizened village elders recently walked into Vijay Singh Rathore's office in Bikaner, Rajasthan, asking for information about private security guards, he was puzzled.

Most of his customers are rich industrialists who need to protect their high-walled mansions from thieves, not poor villagers from the surrounding countryside.

'I was even more taken aback when they said they wanted an armed guard to protect the well in their village,' said Rathore. 'There is such an acute shortage of water that the only way to make sure no one else has it is to post a security guard to stand by the well.'

Farmers in some villages surrounding Bikaner, a desert region prone to droughts, are pooling their limited resources to hire private security guards to guard wells and ponds so that no outsider can sneak in to steal water.

The desert, the relentless sun and the lack of rain in Bikaner, a city in the middle of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, north India, are features that have shaped the daily lives of people here.

Women wear the brightest of bright colours as a stunning contrast against the brown of the desert. Even the food they eat is designed to be cooked using a minimum of water - they use milk or buttermilk instead.