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The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

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The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

The Agariyas labor under harsh conditions to produce India’s salt.

The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Davalram, 64, leveling the salt pan his family has worked on for generations. Most of his friends who started salt farming with him half a century ago have died.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

An Agariya family working in their salt pan in Surajbari creek in Rann of Kutch.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Surath, 12, has been working in his family’s salt pans for the last two seasons. The only education he has received so far is few months of primary training in a makeshift school set up by a local NGO at Surajbari.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

In summer, the temperature is unbearably hot and the salt farmers have to work barefoot, exposing their legs to highly saturated salt. The legs become abnormally thin and do not burn in the funeral pyre when the worker dies.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Work in the fields start in early October, when salt farmers begin the embankment process in the salt flats, still submerged with monsoon water.

Credit: Ajay Dhamecha
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

t is a herculean task to carry the equipment over the marshy tract, as no vehicle can negotiate the road in the post-monsoon season. Here a few workers are carrying a generator over a corrugated sheet.

Credit: Ajay Dhamecha
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Another day begins in the salt plains of Kutch, which accounts for about 75% of India’s total salt production.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Workers prefer to start an early day when the temperature in the Rann is pleasant. The mercury soars to 40 degrees Celsius even in December.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

A group of Agariya women and children working in a local salt factory. The payout for packing 1000 packets of salt is as low as Rs. 80 ($1.19).

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Chhotu, 15, brings water to the salt pans of his family. Water is scarce in the Rann of Kutch and he has to walk 6 km to get a supply of fresh water.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

An Agariya woman sorting the grains beside her hut. During the peak harvesting season, the Agariyas set themselves up in makeshift shacks near the salt fields.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee
The Salt Farmers of the Rann of Kutch

Children growing up in these salt fields are deprived of education and proper facilities. Lack of education is largely responsible for the cycle of exploitation of the salt farmers for generations.

Credit: Sugato Mukherjee

Situated about 130 km from Ahmedabad, the capital of the Indian state of Gujarat, lie the edges of the Rann of Kutch, just 10 km from the Arabian Sea. This is the land of the Agariyas, who have lived here for centuries, knowing just one means of livelihood – salt farming. Working day in day out under a fierce sun from October to June, they grow salt in square-shaped salt pans, harvesting 75 percent of India’s total salt produce.

During the monsoon months, the Rann of Kutch becomes submerged in sea water. As the water begins to recede in October, the Agariyas move in and begin a herculean process. They dig wells to pump out the briny groundwater and fill the square-shaped fields, then rely on the natural evaporation process to leave the white crystals. In winter, the harvest season begins in the salt fields, which are now silvery white with raw salt. Braving a relentless 40 degrees during the day, which often dips to 4 degrees in the night, the Agariyas live for six or seven months in the shacks beside their salt flats. Children begin working in the salt pans from the age of 10.

Production averages 12-15 tons every 15 days from each of the salt pans, and is sent to salt companies and chemical factories across the country. The Agariyas earn a paltry sum of Rs. 60 ($0.90) per ton. The market price of industrial salt is Rs. 4000 per ton while domestic salt sells for Rs. 5500 per ton.

The low incomes and lack of education facilities in the barren desert of the Rann offer few chances for the children of saltpan workers to escape a cycle of poverty and poor health. The salt workers remain generationally indebted to the salt merchants.

And the price of working for years in the harsh conditions is very high – skin lesions, severe eye problems due to intense reflections off the white surfaces, and tuberculosis. A salt worker of Kutch seldom lives beyond 60. When they die, their abnormally thin legs, stiff with years of exposure to highly saturated salt, do not burn in the funeral pyre. Rather, the legs are collected by their relatives and are buried separately in a small grave with salt so that they can decompose naturally.

Sugato Mukherjee is a photographer and writer based in Calcutta and his works have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, National Geographic Traveler, Harper Collins and Yale University Journal. His coffee table book on Ladakh has been published from Delhi in 2013. Some of his visuals and stories can be found at http://sugatomukherjee.zenfolio.com/