Illness and isolation in Kachchh’s salt pans

Jalpa, newly married into the Agariya community, is in her first year of salt farming in the Little Rann of Kachchh. “Before my marriage, I did not know that I would have to endure such strenuous work,” she says. “I don’t want my children to be salt farmers.”

This photo essay follows Agariya women who spend up to eight months a year working in the salt pans of the Rann of Kachchh under temperatures reaching 52°C. Women rake crystals, maintain bunds, and load salt onto trucks, then return to cook and care for their children. They often suffer skin lesions, tuberculosis, eye damage from salt glare, and urinary tract infections due to lack of proper toilets and clean water. Healthcare is limited to infrequent mobile vans without female staff, and women such as Gauri Ben have lost children in childbirth for want of doctors. Gender-blind policymaking also results in the families being issued a single pair of work boots (often ill-fitted for the women) and no protective headgear, leaving them to spend on such gear by themselves. The Agariya Heet Rakshak Manch, a non-profit organisation working for Agariya rights, notes that women are often excluded from development schemes. This resource documents how extreme environmental conditions and state neglect converge on women’s bodies.