Water crisis rubbing salt in agariyas’ wounds

The first thing you notice about Rizwana Haji are her beautiful, watery, almond-brown eyes. She wipes them, smoothes her hair neatly under the drape of her dupatta, and tells me confidingly that sunglasses are for men.

“My husband wears them,” she says nodding towards Sharif, who is dragging a rake through salt crystals in a field nearby, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

“Why don’t you?” She lets out a hearty laugh as if the idea is impossible as well as strange. “There are elderly people here. What’ll they say! In our communities, women don’t wear sunglasses,” she adds waving her hand gently as if brushing the question away. She wipes her watery eyes one more time, and adds, “I’m shy.” Her embarrassment is as endearing as her words.

The water constantly pooling in and hampering Rizwana’s vision is a result of prolonged exposure to dry, saline winds which collect dust and salt particles in the eyes, dehydrating and damaging them gradually. It is one of the most common ailments among agariyas – Gujarat’s salt pan workers. The term comes from “agar”, the Gujarati word for salt fields, that span nearly 5,000 square kilometres in the Little Rann of Kachchh. The rann is a low-lying bowl-shaped tract of land, which, during monsoon, turns into a wetland but remains arid through summer and winter.

The switch from desert to wetland makes the rann’s unique landscape exceptionally biodiverse. It is a sanctuary for migratory birds like Flamingos and Pelicans during the wet season and a haven for blackbucks, boars, and antelopes who live here all year round. The arrival of wildlife tends to foretell what the year would bring, leading to a common local saying: Kutchma kale shu aavse, e aajej dekhay. [In Kachchh, tomorrow can already be seen today].

Once the water drains off, the agariyas move in, set up tents and live here for eight months, turning the underground brine into salt. They produce over 75 per cent of India’s salt.

The rann here is a world of straight lines: white grids of salt pans, square solar panels and rectangles imposed on earth so uniformly it adds to the brutal nature of these vast salt pans. At 10 a.m. the sun is blazing in the rann like a molten orb, covering everything with unbearable white light. It’s an otherworldly terrain, with a thick crust of salt extending to the horizon. The whiteness below and above merge into a glare bordering on violence. The heat draws out water from everything: lips crack, throats burn with thirst, the eyes water all the time and heels split much like the parched earth beneath into deep, painful crevices.

At the peak of summer, the scorched air alone can scramble the mind but that’s one of many traumas the agariyas live with. “The last few years, everyone here wears rain boots while standing in saline water. Our elders did not do that,” says Sakla Ahir, a salt pan worker. “And we found that the funeral pyre would not burn their feet. Sometimes we poured more ghee on it. Other times, we collected the unburnt parts and buried them separately in a grave of salt.”

Hindu and Muslim families that work these pans share the same fate, the same pallor of skin, the same watery eyes, the same bajri no rotlo, mag ni dal (millet roti and moong dal gravy), and most of all, they share the same anxiety: water. Life is governed by a single vital resource: meetha pani. Potable water that has not been exposed to salt.

Rizwana, at 22, has four children, and has spent her entire life as an agariya. Neither she nor Sharik went to school – agariya families spend eight months in the rann and their children cannot enrol. That’s just one among the hardships of an unbelievably tough lifestyle. The day PARI visited Rizwana, she had not had a bath for four or five days. She’ll do that when she goes back to her village Taga (in Rapar Block) for Eid. For the last three years, Rizwana’s family has been buying water from a private tanker, which delivered every 10-15 days. Locals say the Collector’s office has not awarded tanker water supply contracts for the region since 2023. Before that, the panchayat provided water for free, but the Water Supply Department never cleared the dues and so that stopped. Leaving families at the mercy of water privateers.

“I have six people in my family,” says Rizwana. “Two daughters, two sons and us. We buy three barrels [100 litres each] of water every time the tanker comes.” If that happens once in ten days, that’s around five litres per person per day. “The hotter it gets the more water we need. When the water gets low— and the tanker is not due for a few more days— we have to stop all non-essential activities like bathing, washing clothes, dishes etc. This is all we have to drink.” The water she points to is muddy, almost dark, inside the plastic drum. A small cup is left outside for birds who stop by for a drink.

Everything and everyone is thirsty here.

There’s no standard for how much water a person needs each day, but the United Nations says every human being has a right to a minimum of 50 litres daily. For context, in urban areas like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, each person consumes between 150-200L of water per day. Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, governments aim to provide 55L of water per person in rural areas. But in places like the rann that falls to five litres.

In Gujarat, the past two decades have seen water governance entirely restructured and handed over to the private sector. “The water department in Gujarat does not provide water. It provides contracts to private players,” says Pankti Jog, a local activist who’s been tracking governance of that resource in the state for decades. “A few years ago, during a severe water crisis in Surendranagar, I filed Right to Information (RTI) queries about the number of tankers plying water in the area. The department did not respond, and private players owe us no answers. People become invisible when they enter the rann, so government gives them nothing: not even water.”

A 2024-25 CAG report notes that between 2009-25 the state spent Rs. 323.73 crores on ‘Water Loans’ – the government’s funding mechanism to support setting up of individual home pumps, borewells, pipelines, treatment plants etc – which now lie in “inoperative loan accounts.” It means the Water Supply and Sanitation department gave out that much money over 16 years, to accounts that soon went dormant or inactive. So while the loans still exist on record, the money does not.

The CAG report does not indicate where that money has gone, which means it is beyond recovery and was not spent as planned. It certainly does not reflect in improved and functioning water infrastructure.

Emails sent to Kachchh District Collector Anand Patel have so far gone unanswered.

Water governance in Gujarat is chaotic, and has such a huge range of actors involved that seeking accountability is near impossible. Most simply give up. “At the start of the season, I drew up the number of people who’ll live in the rann, to ensure adequate water supply for families,” said Ghanshyam Bhai from the Agariya Hit Rakshak Manch, a collective for the community’s welfare. “It took months to get the paperwork moving from block to district level. By the time the paperwork reached Bhuj [where the Kachchh collectorate is located], the season ended. Through that period, families bought water from private tankers at exorbitant rates.”

PARI spent weeks reaching out to officials in Rapar Block, in Bhuj, at the state level, and also the water companies that ply tankers. Government representatives did not respond to any queries while private players directed us to local officials for answers. Bhowmik Punj, owner of Silver Salt Industries – one of three big salt companies here – was unavailable for comment. His manager Bhola Ram claimed that the company paid for the water tankers. A claim contested by some agariyas, who showed us receipts for payments between Rs. 6,000-7,000 for a season’s supply.

After eight backbreaking months, Rizwana and Sharik have what they toiled for: crystallized salt. In a good year this can fetch up to Rs. 50,000 but these days they’re making around Rs. 30,000 per season.

While prices do fluctuate, salt pan farmers get on average up to 58 paise for every kilogram sold. For context: You can buy Tata Salt for Rs. 27 a kg on Amazon. That’s an unbelievable 4,555 per cent higher. As for pan workers, they say they presently get just 15 paise per kilo. The saltwater causes scaling and thickening of skin, ulcers, fissures, blisters as well as chronic dermatitis and skin lesions. Living with this water scarcity primes people here for hypertension, eye problems, malnourishment and, most of all, gastrointestinal diseases, stomach ache, jaundice, diarrhoea and typhoid.

The primary health centre in Adesar (PHC), an hour’s drive from the salt pan, is not equipped to deal with any of this. We found it did not have cough syrups, pain killers, or gauze. Most importantly, it had no water. Neither the toilet nor the operating theatre worked.

“The water backs up during monsoon as the PHC has been constructed in a low-lying area. Moreover, the toilet has not worked in the seven years this PHC has been running. We have great infrastructure but nothing to do with it,” a local official seeking anonymity said. The doctor in-charge was on leave.

The sub-centre in Palansva village, closest to the rann, was locked up on a Wednesday afternoon. We were told that the doctor had gone to attend a family wedding.

The villagers go to Patan city, 120 km away, to deliver babies in a private hospital. That can cost between Rs. 20,000-25,000 including transport and stay. Many families opt instead to deliver babies at home, increasing risks to both infant and mother. But "agariya sisters are absent from government records,” says activist Pankti Jog. “No reproductive services are offered to them, and it’s near impossible to get maternal or infant mortality data while they are in the rann. This remains a statistical blackhole."

A 2023 media report citing government health management data ranks Kachchh among the worst regions of the state recording 165 “newborn [neonatal] mortality deaths” in a three-month period.

Rizwana wipes her eyes one more time, looks at her husband, still raking the brine, and says, “I don’t like working here but I must help my husband. He has low blood pressure, and the heat makes him faint. He has constant headaches which get worse as the summer peaks. Who would want to work here... in this heat,” she adds, her voice trailing off.

Extreme commodification of water has led to imposition of scarcity on parched groups like the agariyas, while a few other actors profit from the crisis. If Rizwana had access to healthcare, she’d be diagnosed with epiphora – excessive tearing due to tear duct obstruction. It is treatable, preventable, and sometimes partially reversible. Lubricating eye drops and sunglasses would go a long way, if the agariyas had enough information about their health conditions. Treating epiphora can cost up to Rs. 10,000 for families without insurance. And another Rs. 5,000 if they take a private jeep to visit hospitals in Patan. So they rely on occasional free medical camps for diagnosis and help.

“I curse the people who make us live like this. I wish it upon them,” Rizwana says.

The water crisis in the rann is a dystopic fit for the 21st century – with communities allocated water in line with their purchasing power. A butterfly effect of the privatization is that entire communities now suffer from preventable, curable ailments.

In Kachchh, tomorrow can already be seen today, after all.

This story is published under the PARI Senior Fellowship 2025.