The document summarizes the lives and working conditions of migrant workers in different industries in Kutch, India, including salt pan workers, charcoal producers, and brick makers. It describes how entire families, including young children, work long hours under harsh conditions with little pay or safety equipment in the salt pans, charcoal fields, and brick kilns. Children help with tasks like shoveling salt, making charcoal, and flipping bricks but often do not attend school. The workers live in basic temporary shelters with few amenities and face many hardships.

1. M
IGRATION
IN KUTCH
THE LIVES OF SALT
PAN WORKERS,
BRICK MAKERS
AND CHARCOAL
PRODUCERS

2. Workers, like this young woman, carry salt from
the pan to deposit it onto heaps for collection.
After working in the salt for over 14 hours each
day, salt pan workers compare the feeling of salt
cutting through the cracks in their feet to the
sensation of fire burning through the human skin.

3. Children work alongside
adults, shovelling the salt
into taslas (iron vessels).

4. Pramila (right) unloads salt onto a
salt pile while her son (left) looks
on. Pramila and her husband Dasrat
(back) are from Village Vatadi, three
hours away from the pan. Initially,
the family travelled by train but then
took a ride on a truck on the last leg
of the journey as it was Rs. 20 (US
$0.41) cheaper than the commonly
used bus. Their son does not go
to school and works alongside his
parents everyday from 3 am to 7 pm.
The family earns a total of Rs. 1000
(around US $22) a week.

5. The seemingly endless salt pans stretch into the distance. A worker and her family
stand outside their makeshift tent where they live for eight months every year.

6. Pramila’s shoes are made of
the rubber from discarded
tyres. She stitched them
herself and says that she
hasn’t yet found another
material sturdy enough to
withstand the harsh effects
of working in the salt.
The owners of salt pans
are supposed to provide
each labourer with safety
equipment but this only
happens when rumours of
government inspections
start going around. In such
situations, salt pan workers
have woken up to find boots
and sunglasses by their
bedside with a word of
advice – to inform the visiting
government officials that this
equipment has always been
available to them.

7. S
alt pan workers live in makeshift huts made out of burlap
and wood such as this one. The tilted Indian flag hints at the
proximity of the salt pans and mocks the citizenship of these
migrants who remain bereft of all their rights and entitlements.

8. Some workers create
elevated beds for their
families to keep them safe
from scorpions at night.

9. A broken machine used in the salt manufacturing process sits amidst tonnes of salt produced the
year before. Rain and strong winds have sullied this salt on the surface, but it will still be used.

10. Trucks collect salt which
is then taken to the salt
factories to be refined.

11. CHARCOAL FIELDS,
KUTCH
After the branches of the Julie Flora are
chopped down to size, they are arranged
into a pile and then burnt into charcoal.
When the children working in the charcoal
fields went to school for the first time,
they didn’t take well to writing with a pen
and would instead use a stick to write in
the sand. They would also pile up objects
one on top of the other to add sums. The
seasonal hostel teachers, some of them
former charcoal workers themselves,
recognised this pattern and incorporated
the technique into their teaching methods.

12. A
charcoal worker’s
family sets up house
in a desolate field and
uses a lone tree to
shelve its belongings,
and store its cooking
utensils.

13. This dry terrain stretching for miles provides sustenance to Julie Flora, the tree
burnt to make charcoal. In this photo, Pravin (left) and his cousin walk in the
harsh heat to the site where their family is engaged in making charcoal.

14. Pieces of twigs, turned into charcoal, stick out
of a burnt and discarded mound. You can also
see the charpai, a string bed, where a worker
sleeps, with no protection from the harsh
climate of the desert.

15. Migrant workers create their own place of worship, even in
the stark forest which is their home for most of the year.

16. With only a thatched roof as cover, the migrant womenfolk
hang utensils and clothes on the branches of trees.

17. ANIMAL GRAZING,
KUTCH
Parents tend to migrate with their daughters
who help with daily chores such as fetching
water. Meena (9) carries a pot of water on her
head for her family and their animals. She walks
a kilometer each way to get water, a chore that
is repeated several times a day.

18. Meena (right) and Bhavi Bota (9)
are cousins. They help out with
daily chores such as feeding the
young animals.

19. M
IGRATION FROM
NUAPADA TO THE
BRICK KILNS OF
ANDHRA PRADESH

20. Mountains of bricks such as this one can
be found on large brick kilns, each of which
employs hundreds of migrant workers.

21. C
hildren are considered an asset in brick kilns because of their light weight and
little fingers. They walk over wet bricks laid out in the fields and flip them over
periodically, like this little girl is doing, to ensure that the bricks dry uniformly.

22. Girls spend hours laying
out bricks to dry in rows
stretching long distances.

23. Labour contractors in Odisha hire a pathuria (labour unit) comprising a man, a woman and a child
since each member of this unit is responsible for different tasks of brick production. If a couple do
not have a child of the right age, they often borrow one from a neighbour to be eligible for the job.

24. Children play on top of stacks of bricks.