Salt Series

On the northwest coast of India, in the state of Gujarat, close to the border of Pakistan, salt has been made for the last 5,000 years in a seasonal marshland known as the Rann and Little Rann of Kutch. More than 50,000 salt workers in the area harvest around thirty percent of the salt produced in India. It is an extreme region with temperatures reaching up to fifty degrees Celsius.

During the monsoon months, between July to September, the marshland is submerged by the sea and flooded by rivers. From October, the water begins to evaporate with the help of the sun and dry winds from the north, leaving behind a cracked terrain. This is the time when the salt workers, also known as the “Agariyas” move for the season in the salt flats and begin their process of salt farming. Families work together in the salt fields for six to seven months a year and live in basic temporary huts beside their salt pans.

In the blazing sun, they set up wells to pump the salty water from underground deposits and collect it in huge square-shaped salt pans that are carved into the desert floor. Building these pans is already a hard-earned process itself. The farmers stamp and level the surface with their bare feet so that the earth is sealed to stop the brine from seeping back into the ground. The pumps used to be run by a diesel generator that was eating up almost seventy percent of the profits of the saltworks. They just recently became replaced by solar-driven pumps that kept the work at least minimally profitable.

From natural solar evaporation, the brine starts to concentrate, and the first layer of salt is formed. The brine is continually scraped with heavy wooden rakes to encourage the formation of salt crystals. Once the water has evaporated, the workers harvest the thick crust of salt and collect it in rows of piles next to the pan. This is mostly done by hand. Later, the salt is taken by trucks to the nearby villages around Little Rann of Kutch. From there, it is sold to the markets.

Many of the workers are from the lowest caste and earn only about one dollar per ton of harvested salt, whereas the market price of industrial salt is around sixty-seven dollars per ton. The Agariya children start working in the salt fields from the age of ten with few chances for education. Most of the workers are poorly equipped, mainly working barefoot, and suffer skin diseases. The bright sun and white surface of the salt leave many of the salt workers color-blind. The life expectancy of a salt farmer of Kutch is only fifty to sixty years. And when they die, their legs often do not burn in the crematory because they are impregnated with salt.

Harvest season ends in June, just before the monsoon approaches. The families take down their shacks and move back to the villages, sometimes across the country. The monsoons come and wash their carefully created tracks and pans away, turning the desert into a sea again. Four months later, the Agariya come back and start all over.