Shekhar Kapur, India's top-grossing film-maker and director of the Oscar-winning films “Elizabeth” and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” is blogging on Changemakers.net, inspired by Paani ("Water"), a film he is developing to examine the daily struggle for water in the slums of Mumbai.

In this blog on Changemakers, Kapur displays photos he spent three years compiling before filming Paani to help him understand the conditions of people who live on the streets, and in water deprived conditions.

He notes that “living in India, one could not but be aware of water shortages: water coming to the taps only for three-quarters hours a day; filling large buckets of water early in the mornings, so that there would be enough to last the whole day. (There are) newspaper reports of parched lands due to the failure of monsoons; famine in isolated areas of the country.”

In the script for Paani, Kapur speculates that coming wars will be fought over water rather than oil. Global warming may make water the scarcest resource, causing millions to die of thirst and countries to go to war to colonize water resources.

Kapur has said Paani is “the film I've wanted to make all my life.” It portrays a city of 20 million in the year 2025 that has run out of water. “Whatever little water is still available is sucked up by those that can still afford it, and protected with armed might,” he says. “Water has now become a currency, and is used as weapon of political and social oppression. The water wars have broken out.”

“We have forgotten how to worship water,” Kapur says. “After all, if water is available to you on tap, and in the same place as you do your daily toilet, how could you even respect it? Water to us has become functional—so we have started to take it for granted. It is now our right to have water running in our taps at our will and our command.

“But it never used to be like that and I assure you it will never be like that again. Nor was it supposed to be. We were supposed to go to water, not the other way round. In all of human history water has been worshipped by every culture. Water was the center of all community, of all existence. But now we pollute it, commercialize it, turn it for profit. We do everything but worship it.

“So water is turning against us. That which nourished the very essence of life will soon teach us to value very drop we can find. Worship every drop.”

Kapur’s blog is presented on Changemakers with an online competition titled "Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis" that aims to discover and support entrepreneurs with groundbreaking approaches to the world's water and sanitation challenges. The Global Water Challenge (GWC) and Ashoka's Changemakers invite you to enter the competition, or to comment and vote on the competition entries.

Kapur's Career

Kapur started his career as a management consultant after receiving a degree in accountancy, and formal training in chartered accountancy. Soon after, India’s entertainment industry beckoned and Kapur switched careers. He joined the Hindi film industry as an actor and worked in popular 1980s TV serials as well.

Moving on, Kapur directed some of India’s most popular and critically acclaimed films, Masoom (1983) and Mr India (1987). Kapur received international recognition with his fifth film Bandit Queen which won several international awards.

Kapur’s first international film Elizabeth (1998) received eight Oscar nominations including best picture. The sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) recently won the Academy Award for best costume design. In between films, Kapur co-produced the stage musical Bombay Dreams with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Kapur has co-founded Virgin Comics and Animation with author Deepak Chopra and British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson. Its studio of artists and writers is creating a new wave of Indian character entertainment for global distribution. It hopes to spark a creative renaissance in India—leading the country’s transition from outsourcer to a source of innovative and dynamic creations and creators.

Kapur was in New York in April directing a segment of the film New York, I Love You that Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, Cold Mountain) scripted and was planning to direct before he died in March. It features Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, and John Hurt.

Kapur has agreed to direct a $200-million fantasy-epic for Warner Brothers titled Larklight. Kapur is working with the screenwriter on the screen play for this franchise book that Warner Brothers hopes will be the new Harry Potter.