Within the next few days, India is expected to commence work on a massive dam and canal building project that will channel water away from regions that have too much and being it to drought stricken areas.

This will reroute water from major rivers including the Ganges and Brahmaputra and creating canals to link the Ken and Batwa rivers in central India and Damanganga-Pinjal in the west.  It will cost 20 Trillion Rupees, or more than $400 Million Australian and won't be completed for 20 years.

"Interlinking rivers is our prime agenda and we have got the people's support and I am determined to do it on the fast track," water resources minister Uma Bharti told reporters.

India is in the grip of a severe drought as a result of a searing heatwave and two consecutive monsoons that were weaker than usual.  A quarter of the country's 1.1 billion people are affected in some way.  There are mass migrations from drought-parched regions in the west, where agricultural fields are dry and cracked.  The next monsoon season begins in the first week of June, and Indians hope it will bring some relief.  But the country's reservoirs were already drained to less than a fifth of their total capacity in May, and whatever rain comes will have a lot of work to do.

But even though the need is obvious, many critics do not believe the interlinking project will produce the desired result.

"The government is trying to redraw the entire geography of the country," said Dr. Latha Anantha, from the River Research Centre.  "They will have to dig canals everywhere and defy the ecology of the country. It is a waste of money and they have overestimated how much water there is in the rivers they want to divert," she added.\

What's more, 54 of India's 56 rivers flow into Bangladesh, the government of which is asking Indian leaders to share specific plans for how they'll execute this project to ensure it's not violating international rules that forbid countries from taking water away from people living downstream.

"India is giving a lot of importance to its own people hit by drought, but it must not ignore our rights," said Bangladesh Minister for Water Resources, Muhammad Nazrul Islam,  "I don’t expect India to do that either."