New Delhi, July 10 -- Foreign policy looks at water and sees the sea. It misses the village well.

It measures power in shipping lanes and naval bases, in the choke points where fleets and cargo pass. The Strait of Hormuz shows the stakes now: a contested channel through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves can rattle markets and strand seafarers. The Indo-Pacific is itself a map of water, drawn around ports and the routes between them. A serious U.S.-India partnership has to master it. Another water runs closer to the body. It is the water a family gives a child to drink. That water carries no fleets. It tests something more basic: whether people trust the state and its partners to make daily life safer.

In rural Telangana, th...