Surendranagar, India – For many people, salt is an ingredient without which a meal is tasteless and incomplete. But have we ever given a thought to the effort which goes into preparing this salt?

In India, farmers spend eight months in the harsh salt pans in the Little Rann of Kutch braving the scorching rays of the sun and the spine-chilling wintry winds often without basic facilities like clean drinking water, electricity or even a decent roof over their head.

Operating diesel pumps to irrigate the salt pans is not only a laborious task but is also expensive. To purchase diesel, farmers need to borrow money from money lenders who charge them steep rates of interest. Salt traders also fix the rates of salt in advance and as always, the rates are much lower than the market price of salt. These result in the salt farmers being trapped in a vicious cycle of never-ending debts.

Moreover, the children of salt workers are unable to access basic education because of a lack of resources and also because, for eight months of the year, these children accompany their parents in the salt pans. The entire community is also deprived of primary health support.

To help the community, SEWA, the national implementing agency of MTCP2 Programme in India, stepped in to assist 1,100 salt farmer women of Little Rann of Kutch with its Solar Pump Program. The program aims to reduce the cost incurred due to the purchase of diesel, minimize the operational labour for the salt farmers, save the environment in terms of a drop in air and noise pollution levels and sizeable reduction in the use of electricity, and improve the socio-economic life of the community.

The process was gradual and involved a lot of steps as simply providing solar pumps would not be enough to render long term sustainability to these farmers. It is also important for farmers to have a sense of ownership. The program followed a holistic approach comprised of the following activities:

• Tying up with a national bank, SEWA provided loans at soft interest rates to salt farmers for purchasing the solar pumps.
• Teams from SEWA regularly visited these salt farmers to gain an insight into the issues being faced by them and brainstorm practical solutions to their problems.
• The Child Care Centres and Mobile Health Care Vans served the educational and health care requirements of these farmers.
• Awareness sessions were provided to explain the need and benefits of keeping tabs on the market rate of salt and doing away with middlemen.
• Arrangements were made for providing nutritious food through RUDI (SEWA’s agro commodity arm) and pure and clean drinking water.
• Direct linkages with salt factories were set up to ensure receipt of a proper price for their salt.
• An understanding was provided with regard to the industry requirement when it comes to salt quality.
• All these steps combined together led to an overall improvement in the socio-economic life of the salt farmer community.

However, at first, SEWA met several challenges in implementing this project. A major challenge was bringing in acceptance toward a new technology (solar pumps) and detaching the farmers from the diesel pumps which they had been using for generations. This was addressed by awareness campaigns on the advantages of solar pumps, demo sessions, and showcasing success stories through videos.

Another hurdle is finance. In sync with the SEWA ethos of creating a sense of ownership, SEWA did not want to simply donate solar pumps to the farmers and buying one was totally out of question, so SEWA facilitated soft loans by tying up with nationalized banks.

For some of the orthodox farmers, the sun was equivalent to God and hence sacrosanct. So it took SEWA quite a while to condition them with regards to tapping the sun as a source of energy. Other challenges were the resources that were resolved on a slow but steady basis.

Before, using diesel pumps, salt farmers usually produce 450 tonnes of salt incurring INR 60,000 (USD 815) for diesel cost. But now, with solar pumps and following the hybrid method, they only spend INR 22000 (USD 299) on diesel to produce 562 tonnes of salt. This translates to INR 38,000 (USD 516) savings on diesel cost and a jump of 112 tonnes in salt production which if calculated at the selling price of INR 140 (USD 2) per ton means an increase of INR 15,680 (USD 213) in revenue. These additional savings can be used for the education of the children, purchase of agri equipment, house repairs, purchase of livestock, opting for better agricultural practices like soil, fertilizer, etc. Moreover, the use of solar pumps is less harmful to the environment.

All these efforts are to ensure that the next generation salt farmers do not undergo the physical, economic, and mental torture which their predecessors have to go through.

For the success of this initiative, it helped that the salt farmers themselves really wanted to improve their work and life conditions. SEWA’s partners including banks, salt traders, salt factories, agricultural institutions, corporate sector, media, etc. also enabled bringing about this huge change in the socio-economic standard of the agariyas (salt farmers) either by way of academic, information, knowledge or resources support.

To ensure the sustainability of these efforts, SEWA recommends for the government to introduce and implement pro-salt farmer policies. The sector needs to be given due recognition and integrated into the mainstream agriculture sector. Farmer-centric subsidy packages need to be developed in order to make the solar pumps affordable for these salt farmers. CSR arms of corporate entities need to pitch in with support in terms of knowledge/information, funds and other resources. #