Two key problems in India's water sector are the estimation of dry-spell vulnerability during kharif, the monsoon season, and the design of water and energy-planning inputs to help villages undertake demand-side management during rabi, the post-monsoon season. In this article, we report our joint work with the Government of Maharashtra's Department of Agriculture on a World Bank-assisted program called the Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture, or PoCRA. The project is spread over 5,000 villages in 15 districts of Maharashtra (see Figure 1). Its main objective is to make smallholder farmers resilient to climate variability through targeted interventions. A key strategy is to promote water and energy budgeting in these villages and to supplement the community infrastructure and the capabilities of individual farmers.

California has been in a drought for almost five years now, making water an extraordinarily precious resource--one that Californian residents and governments are eager to protect. On Wednesday, California suspended its mandatory drought restrictions, saying that the state is turning over responsibility of the water restrictions to individual communities, letting them set their own restrictions based on their water budgets, with the state only stepping in if the budgets are unrealistically optimistic. But how can a community keep track of its water budget? IBM's Watson program has already beaten Jeopardy!, invented its own recipes, assisted in treating patients with chronic conditions, and is currently used by over 80,000 developers. Now, in partnership with environmental analytics company OmniEarth, Watson will help save the existence of humans on Earth--or at least in California.