The water beneath this city of four million residents is disappearing twice as fast as it's being replenished. In fact, it's already happening. Each day I hear explosions, as workers blast the rocky hills into level plots for more houses and apartments. Each home is surrounded by thick cement walls crested with shards of glass. Not a penny spent on footpaths or public gardens.
Government is nowhere to be found.
Many of the houses are financed by American dollars. Every person I meet seems to have a son, daughter, cousin, niece or nephew working in the United States and sending money back home. In nearby Jubilee Hills, one of Hyderabad's wealthiest areas, almost all the roughly 600 mansions are owned by Indian families living abroad. They return to rest, to chat with relatives, to send their servants out for groceries, to eat, sleep, hanker for oblivion and death. They may not want to stay in India for more than a few months, but no fate is worse than dying abroad.