From the editorial office. One of the most acute problems of modern India is the lack of clean drinking water. Which, at first glance, may seem strange. Look at the geographical map: the country is dotted with rivers, most of which originate in the glaciers of the highest mountains in the world. It seems that India is literally overflowing with the purest water.

But it only seems so. Crossing densely populated areas, rivers overflow with industrial and household waste from human activities, and very quickly their waters become practically unsuitable for drinking and for household and sanitary needs. Who is to blame for this? Not only the people living on the banks of the great Indian rivers are to blame, but also the "authorities" who pay clearly insufficient attention to the construction of sewage treatment plants, the development of water protection legislation, and simply teaching the population to take care of water.

Today we publish two articles about the problems of water protection and the use of clean drinking water in India. One is about how water is treated in Indian families, and the other is about how river water is used in Indian cities. We believe that the issues raised in these articles are by no means purely territorial, "intra-Indian" in nature. According to a number of testimonies, river water pollution in many countries is becoming truly widespread, and other rivers are literally on the verge of death.

Our magazine has repeatedly written that the lack of drinking water can already cause acute conflicts and even wars between states in the XXI century.¹ By publishing another block of materials on this topic, we want to once again draw public attention to a problem that may not become a threat to safe socio-economic development in many regions of the world today or tomorrow.

N. I. PETROV, Editor of Asia and

¹ See, for example: Likhacheva A. B. Water problem of Central Asia: the role of Russia, China and Iran // Asia and Africa Today. 2014, N 3. (Likhachova A. B. 2014. Vodnaya probiema Tsentralnoi Azii: rol Rossii, Kitaya i Irana. Aziya i Afrika segodnya. N 3) (in Russian)

Permanent link to this publication: