Delegates attending the inaugural session on water conservation at the annual caucus of overseas Indians here were surprised to find that the chief guest was Indian Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahai.

That was no mistake. Although the minister did make the perfunctory tourism promotion statements, he also stressed that India's new policy would be equally intended to ensure that tourists do not squander the country's precious water resources.

He urged the Indian diaspora gathered here for the annual event known as the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) to build hotels that would focus on water conservation in equal measure as guest comfort.

Under India's 12th five-year plan, tourism has been declared a poverty-alleviating sector that can contribute significantly to the economic progress of rural areas and create jobs, especially for women. The country is targeting another five million visitors over the next few years, which it hopes will create 25 million jobs.

But tourists, and hotels, are major water-guzzlers in a country whose large population of 1.21 billion and rapid economic development is also putting huge pressure on scarce water resources.

The country is heavily dependent on the annual monsoon but precipitation is uneven both geographically and temporally. Delegates were surprised to learn that Cherapunji, the northeast hill region said to be world's wettest, actually gets most of the rain in only a four-month period and for the rest of the year suffers from a water shortage.

A theme paper distributed at the session said that India is the world's largest user of groundwater, with an estimated usage of 230 cubic metres per year, more than a quarter of the world's total. Hotels and hospitals also draw heavily on groundwater.