It is not just the temperature that is rising in Madhya Pradesh but also the anxiety over water supply. Water has become so scarce that while people at some places are hiring armed guards to prevent its theft, at others they have been found using a lottery system to fill their buckets. There are places, like the Bundelkhand region of the state, where water scarcity is affecting even the marriage prospects of boys. However, the worst happened in Sagar district where a villager was hacked to death for refusing water from his well to a fellow villager. Bhallu Rajak ,a resident of Mudkhera village, was killed by Vithal Thakur in a fit of rage when the former refused to give him more water than his daily quota. "Thakur, a resident of the same village, wanted to draw more water than his daily quota. When Rajak objected to that, Thakur allegedly hacked him to death", the police said. To avoid such fights over water, people in Niwari village of Tikamgarh district have started a lottery system. "There used to be frequent scuffles over water so we thought of starting the lottery system and everyone in the village agreed to it", says Manvendra Birthare. If a war for water has been averted in Niwari, armed guards have been deployed in the Shivpuri-Gwalior region to keep a vigil over the 65-km canal which provides Gwalior city its drinking water. According to the administration s the water is vulnerable to what it calls 'water bandits'. "Gwalior city is in the grip of an acute water crisis. This scarcity even leads to clashes and fights among us", say residents. But the local authorities, responsible for supplying potable water, are extremely hard pressed due to resource constraints. A steep fall in the ground water level has been reported in a number of wells. Authorities rule out the possibility of new tubewells. "The current water level is going down and tubewells are no longer able to pump out water," says Vivek Narayan Shejwalkar, mayor of Gwalior city. Water shortage has even affected the chances of finding suitable brides for young men, as nobody wants to get their daughters married off in the villages facing water scarcity. People in Bundelkhand have to trudge miles to collect a few pitchers of water which is a back-breaking struggle, especially for the women. "Our children are not getting married as we have an acute water problem in our village. People do not want to give away their daughters to us for the reason that they will have to suffer due to the water crisis. They say that their daughters will have to travel miles to fetch water for the family. I have been facing the same problem here ever since I got married nearly 40 years back," said Ram Pyari, a housewife in Chhattarpur area of Bundelkhand. Apart from Bundelkhand and Gwalior, many other districts in Madhya Pradesh including Bhopal, Hoshangabad, Rewa, Jabalpur, Chambal, Indore and Ujjain are facing acute shortage of drinking water since early April.