Gujarat’s agariyas – the salt of the earth

A village at the edge of a desert, or rann as we call it in Gujarati. A man stands before me: squinty eyes, grey hair, legs with cracked soles rough and hard, skin complaining of the heat, cheeks and lips of the same colour, a strong body with a sprinkling of salt. Anyone could identify him right away: here is an agariya, a salt pan worker.

The desert at Kharaghodha holds no sand, only salty clay all around. In the monsoon it is filled with water. And after that only clay. Every day gets hotter than the one before and soon, all you will see in the desert is dry clay. Not a tree on the horizon, only occasional thorny shrubs here and there. Just hearing about it is exhausting, imagine working here! You can walk and walk and feel you’ve reached nowhere. And yet there is no option but to drag this life along.

“This road isn’t unfamiliar,
yet I am lost in the desert.
I took the path of my ancestors,
yet I am lost in the desert.”

Weaving in the misery of the traditional life of salt-farm workers, 65-year-old poet of the rann, D. K. Vaniya adds, "Almost 99 per cent of the agariyas in this area belong to the denotified tribe – the Chumvalia Koli." Chumvalia because they come from Chumval region in the north-eastern part of Viramgam, a subdivision of Ahmedabad district. The word Chumvalis in Gujarati means 44 - denoting the 44 villages in the area. The members of this tribe live in distress and despair; every house has a story of struggle. Some of them are heart-breaking. A life full of conflict is taken for granted by those who live it and rarely noticed by others.

“My older son is 18. He studied till Class 8 and then he left school. My second son is 16 but has never been to school. I too am uneducated.” The words of salt worker Ramsing Bajaniya are heavy with a sense of responsibility. “There are seven of us in the house. Three girls, two boys, and two of us,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. Like most salt pan workers he has a big family, and like most people with big families he has plenty of trouble.

"I worked for twenty years in Maliya. Then three years in Dada (Vachhada dada). Then I came to Diwa and from there to Dhrangadhra; we worked on the fields there," says Kamsi Bhai in a weary tone. All these spots are located within Surendranagar district. Tired of moving from place to place, he finally returned home to Odu village in the Patdi taluka. Not that there was much peace or comfort there. "Kam no karie to taavadi aapdi ondhi thai jaay. [If we stopped working there will be no food to cook]" he says with a sigh. "I slogged all day and night to raise my children.” He still does. “The hard work makes me look even older than I am." His Aadhar card says Kamsi Bhai is 44 years old, but he looks anywhere above 60.

“The body aches when we work,” says Kamsi Bhai. “Legs, back, everything hurts. When we labour long hours, the pain in the lower back is unbearable." You can feel that pain as he speaks.

Three months of biting cold. Five months of blistering heat. And eight months of backbreaking work, labouring in the agars where the agariyas work. The salt pans are divided into gamada (evaporation basin) and gamadi (crystallisation basin). Two gamadis combined make a pata of about 70,000 square feet.

"We have three patas here in Kharaghoda. Even if all five of us were to work on them it would not be enough. And yet I do it all alone, as my wife takes care of our home, and our son goes to the factory," Kamsi Bhai is sitting at the edge of his pata as he speaks to me. Age, exhaustion, and grief are writ all over his face. D. K. Vaniya voices it simply: "I worked on the pata for a while and then quit it. It is too demanding."

There is no measurement for the gamada. They are used for increasing the strength of the brine (concentrated salt water). Water flows into these 16-inch-deep pans, where a natural process of evaporation takes place. The more the water evaporates, the thicker the brine gets. Agariyas call this brine degreevalu paani. "As the water moves ahead from one gamada to the next, its degree of salinity and thickness increases," says salt pan owner Anil Padaliya, 24.

"An experienced agariya only needs to look at the water to judge, but those who are new to this work may use an instrument. Here in the rann we all just call that instrument the ‘degree’," says Padaliya. He is referring to the Baumé Hydrometer. As the salinity of the water increases, the liquid becomes thicker and heavier than regular water. The more crystallised the liquid, the higher the degree of salinity.

Ramsing Bajaniya, a 52-year-old farmer from Kharaghoda, details the process to us, talking between rounds of garakam (mud work) on his pata: “The salinity value of the water going into the gamada from a borewell ranges from 12 to 14 degrees as measured on the hydrometer. You fill one gamada with water, leave it there for two days and then release it into the next. You repeat the same process of leaving the water for two days each, in all the gamada.

“In the end,” says Bajaniya, “when all the gamada are filled, and the salinity of the water reaches 24 degrees, you release it into the patas. It is here in the patas that the salt begins to form at 25 to 26 degrees. Here you will see the skim of salt formation."

How many gamada are needed before the water reaches the pata?

“If the water we get is at 18 to 20 degrees, then seven to eight will do. If we get less salty water, say at about 9 to 10 degrees, we will have to prepare more gamada. Maybe 14, 16, or even 17, it depends on the salination degree of the water we get." Ramsing takes a deep breath, lifts the shovel, and gets back to his garakam.

Garakam is the very first task which starts months before salt cultivation does. The nature of the work makes you sweat even in biting cold. Garakam involves preparing the basins by dividing the salt farm for the two processes: evaporation and crystallisation. Once the basins are ready, an outlet is made to allow the water to move across the pans. And the work, or at least one phase of it, is done. It is rather easy to prepare the evaporation basins. But the mud work for the crystallisation basins, is hard and needs a lot of care.

"We coat the pata with mud, then release a little water into it and pound the sludgy soil or roll the single drum roller to harden the floor of the pan,” explains Munna Bhai Ughreja, an agariya. Salt pan workers like him walk up and down the sludgy floor of the field, making it hard and even, readying it for the next phase, to ensure that the salt water does not seep back into the soil. “We keep repeating the process until the field is ready. After which we release the water from the gamada into the pata," Munnabhai says. He explains the importance of coating even the embankments of the pata with mud to ensure that the clay is not mixed with the brine.

“It’s a lot of donkey work,” says Munna Bhai, who takes a salt field on rent every season. Mud work begins in October-November. “It takes about a month and a half." he says.

Ramsing, who works on Munna Bhai's field pitches in, "kharu kaam garakam. Dodhek maino kaam harkhu karvu padya, tain jana karie taan. [The real labour is mud work. We toil for one and a half months, three of us]." He is walking across the muddy soil of the crystallisation basins to level it. Ramsing's wife, Sharda Ben, is daubing mud on the edges of the pata. They do not have much experience of this work; though they have been involved with other tasks related to salt cultivation for years now.

There are multiple tasks involved in salt cultivation "He used to work as a labourer before this, loading salt wagons,” says Sharda Ben. “Stacking the sacks of 50 to 100 kilograms, we used to make 300-350 rupees. I used to go to the factory to fill salt bags. It was a kilometre away from home, and I would go at 6 in the morning to come back by 5 in the evening. No fixed wages. We get paid for the work we do. My two daughters and I used to work there. For every 1,000 bags that we filled, we got 80 rupees. So, for a full day's work between the three of us we would make anything between 450 to 500 rupees," Every word that drops from Sharda Ben's lips reveals hard truths.

"One of the girls got married, the other left the work. It is not the kind of job one can do all alone. We need at least three. You have to pack the bags, stitch them up to seal, making sacks of 25 or 50 kgs. It is a lot of work. We would use a spade to gather the finely ground salt," Sharda Ben says wiping the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her blouse and cleaning the mud stuck on her hand with her fingers.

Garakam also includes the sinking of a well. The workers dig until they reach the subsoil water. "Earlier for salt cultivation we used to dig wells in the desert that were 25 to 60 feet deep. Today we have to use a borewell to reach the ground water at 80 to 250 feet," says D. K. Vaniya. "Quite a while ago, when we used to go to the desert the whole of Kharaghoda would mourn and wail. Once we were in the cart, we would not return for the next seven to eight months," recalls 80-year-old Shanta Ben Marsuniya. "Kaam kathun kharu, pan pela jevu kaathun nath rayun, technologyne lidhe. [Of course, the work is challenging but not as much as before, thanks to technology]," adds young Anil Padaliya.

"Our pata is easily 37 kilometres away form Kharaghoda, but still we manage to go to the village once a week, sometimes once a month, pick up the stuff we need and come back. Even the vegetable vendor comes here on his bike; the tanker comes with water, both for drinking and for household use every week. The solar panels have also eased our work. [That is, all electrical appliances can be used on solar energy where manual labour was once required]. When we use the rake and comb the fields we wear boots," Anil sums up the many changes that have come to mark the lives of the agariyas.

After the difficult garakam, comes dantara (rake) work. The water thickened in the evaporation basins, known as kharvan (saturated brine), is released towards the pata through a narrow hole. The water stays in the prepared pata while the agariyas repeatedly comb the field. The movement of the rake across the field breaks the crust of salt into small splinters. Agariyas call these ‘beej’ or ‘seeds’. One needs to comb the field with the iron rake continuously for eight to ten days to get the raw salt crystals or seeds ready.

"The more we move the rake across the field, the more salt we get. The movement of the rake stirs the saturated brine, increases the degree of salinity, and that means we get more salt," says Munna Bhai. He is talking to us while moving the large iron rake from one end of the field to the other in this Janata Agar salt pan. Another agariya, Vanita Ben Padaliya, 45, joins the conversation. “We do this every alternate day. It takes two hours to comb the field with the rake. But as the quantity of the salt increases, so does the time it takes – from two to three to four hours."

The agariyas spend three to four months pulling the rake and preparing salt crystals. There will still be water filled in the pan, three inches above the crystal layer. As the volume of the salt crystals increases, so does the pressure on the arms, the pain in the back, the demand on the legs, and the intensity of the April heat beating down from the sky. The bodies bend inwards with the weight of hard work.

The salt farm labourers help each other; this is called dhaale aavavu (to come to shield). "We need about four to five people to collect the salt from the field. If we get some people from nearby salt pans, we call it 'dhale aaya'. When they need, we go to them, when we need, they pitch in." Anil's words speak of cooperation, very important in a thinly inhabited area. If someone cannot return the dhal (favour), then he pays a 500 to 600-rupee compensation to the person.

How much does a salt worker earn?

"Fifteen rupees for each sack. In one sack you can fill about a hundred kilos of salt," Kamsi Bhai offers a clear calculation. But he works as a labourer in someone else's field. What about those who operate their own fields? "The salt is not ready yet, so two rupees less in seventy [68] is what we can expect." explains Anil Padaliya. He will get 68 rupees for a 100 kg of salt, or 680 rupees a ton.

How much salt will he get this year?

"Two patas can yield between 900 to 2,000 tons," Anil says. At 2,000 tons he would get 13.6 lakh rupees for the salt he cultivates. What about expenses? "Those include thirteen barrels of diesel at 18,592 rupees for one barrel." An expense of roughly 2.42 lakh rupees, I reckon, doing some quick mental math.

Any other expenses? "Labor of four to five people from the household," says Padaliya. And? "A tractor charge of 15 rupees per ton of salt." This would translate into Rs. 30,000 of tractor rent for 2,000 tons.

What else? “Racenu paani, [mother water]." ‘Mother water’ is the liquid that remains after the salt crystals are harvested. How much does that cost? "That is not a cost incurred. That is income. One tanker of mother water brings 2,000 rupees," says Anil. "This time we will have 30- 35 tankers, so 60 to 70,000 rupees.” Now if we deduct the cost of the diesel, the rent for tractors, and add the income from the mother water, we can say that 2,000 tons of salt brings 11.58 lakh rupees roughly. Which means just a little over 579 rupees for every ton of salt.

The price of a kilogram of TATA Salt in the market is Rs. 28 (MRP). Anil makes about 58 paisa on selling the same amount of salt.

However, Kamsi Bhai, who works as a labourer on someone else’s field, it is much less than that. "The seths [owners] sold it at seventy and a half [70.5 rupees] this time,” he says. “A total of 354 tons. I got 50,300 rupees in all.” This means that as a labourer working on another’s field, he got just under 15 paisa for the same kilogram of salt that he produced.

It is the sweat of thousands of agariyas like Kamsi Bhai, Ramsing, Anil, Vanita Ben that cultivates the salt which in turn helps the Government of India boast in its annual reports (2021-22): ''Our country produced 265.99 lakh tons of salt this year i.e. 2021-22 as compared to 265.64 lakh tones during last year. India continues to hold third position in the production of salt, next to China and USA.”

Salt sits at No. 58 in the Union List (List I) of the Seventh Schedule under Article 246 of the Indian Constitution. Being on the Union list means only the Centre may legislate on it. There is also a Central Advisory Board (CAB) for salt. And the list of members of the CAB on the Government of India website, includes bureaucrats and MPs from both houses of Parliament. It also includes MLAs, representatives of salt producers' associations from seven states (Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Maharashtra), and educated advisors who may have the interest of the farmers at heart.

The only people missing here are the agariyas themselves.

This story is originally reported in Gujarati