Living by the sun, losing to the rain: life in Marakkanam’s salt pans in T.N.
As Tamil Nadu swelters through one of its harshest summers in recent years, many look to the sky hoping for relief in the form of an afternoon shower. But in the salt pans of Marakkanam, rain is the one thing workers cannot afford to wish for. Every spell of rainfall stalls salt production for days and costs them wages. So, even as they endure hours under a relentless sun that reflects off the white salt fields with blinding intensity, they hope for the heat to continue. It is a cruel irony that the weather which leaves workers dizzy, dehydrated, and exhausted is also what keeps their livelihoods alive. This year, temperatures crossed the 40°C mark across several districts well into June, while high humidity made conditions feel even more oppressive. According to the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), the State recorded its second-highest average minimum temperature for June since 2015. Nights remained nearly one degree Celsius warmer than normal, offering little relief to workers after a long day of manual labour. The lack of overnight cooling, coupled with prolonged daytime heat, left much of Tamil Nadu reeling under persistent heat stress. Even by mid-July, weak southwest monsoon conditions delayed widespread rainfall, extending heatwave-like conditions across many parts of the State.Livelihoods from salt Salt work is typically available from January to August in Tamil Nadu. Women earn between ₹400 and ₹500 a day, while men are paid ₹700 to ₹750. Workers usually begin around 6 a.m. and finish by 10 a.m., or until whenever the work is done, and come back around 3 p.m. when the volume of harvested salt is high.
Harvested salt is piled into heaps and covered with tarpaulin sheets until traders arrive to purchase it.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
Salt production follows a timed process that depends on dry weather. Seawater is channelled into evaporation pans and left to evaporate for several days until salt crystals form. The crystallised salt is then raked into piles, left to dry further, scraped into baskets and carried to large heaps, where it is covered with tarpaulin sheets until traders arrive to purchase it. Every change in the weather is closely watched, for even a brief drizzle can ruin an entire day’s harvest.
A woman works in a salt pan in Karipalayam, Marakkanam, on an overcast day. Instead of finding relief from the cloud cover, workers hurry to harvest as much salt as possible before an impending drizzle can bring production, and their wages, to a halt.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
Navaneetham, 45, points to her legs, where the skin has darkened the skin, after years of working in the salt pans. “I always have boils on my feet,” she says.
After four hours in the salt pans, Naveneetham shows the boils and blisters on her feet. The day’s work is far from over as she still has cooking and household chores waiting at home.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
She and her husband have taken a salt pan on sub-lease and do all the work themselves because they cannot afford to hire labourers. “We can’t pay anyone else, so we handle everything,” she says. The work is seasonal, which means the family has to manage without an income for nearly six months every year.
Naveneetham and her husband, who have leased a small section of the salt pan, return in the afternoon to continue work and check on the salt. Unable to afford hired labour, they do all the work themselves.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
“We somehow survive by borrowing money. That’s how we’ve been eating,” she says. Their son, who completed a B.Com degree, briefly joined them in the salt pans but left for Chennai because he could not bear the heat.Tamil Nadu provides a ₹5,000 annual monsoon relief assistance to registered salt pan workers to help sustain their families during the rainy months (October to December) when production halts. The aid is distributed to families registered under the Tamil Nadu Manual Workers Social Security and Welfare Board.Since the assistance is provided on a per-family basis, only one member of the household is eligible to receive it. Although both Navaneetham and her husband are salt pan workers, the family received the State government’s ₹5,000 financial assistance for only one beneficiary.
Entire families often work in the salt pans to earn a living. Children, too, spend hours under the sun when there is no one to look after them at home.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
Marakkanam is among Tamil Nadu’s traditional salt-producing regions, alongside major centres such as Thoothukudi, Vedaranyam and Cuddalore. However, unlike Thoothukudi, where large, contiguous salt fields enable large-scale production, Marakkanam’s salt pans are relatively smaller and more fragmented.
From 6 a.m. onwards, salt pan workers are constantly on their feet for four to five hours, depending on the amount of salt to be harvested. There is no shade to escape the sun except a small makeshift shelter or a few prosopis bushes.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
According to a salt pan manager, Thoothukudi remains the State’s largest salt-producing hub as the economies of scale keep production costs lower. “The pans there are much larger, so the cost of production is lower. The quality is also better. Buyers are willing to transport salt over longer distances because the overall cost still works out in their favour,” he says. As a result, traders often procure salt from Thoothukudi despite the higher transportation costs, making it a more competitive market compared to Marakkanam.
Each basket of harvested salt weighs around 25 kg. Workers balance them on their heads and make repeated trips across the salt pans to build the salt heaps.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
Climate change effectsThe monsoon has always marked the end of the salt-making season, but, Sarasu, 50, a resident of Villivakkam in Marakkanam, says unseasonal summer showers are now eating into what was once a dependable period of work.“It is becoming more and more precarious. Earlier, we could count on earning through most of the summer. Now, unseasonal rains cut the season short, and we somehow manage. The monsoon months are the hardest,” she said.To get by, her family borrows small sums from neighbours, self-help groups and moneylenders, like most salt pan workers. With agricultural work becoming increasingly scarce during the off-season, her husband takes up whatever manual work he can find, often loading and unloading sacks for daily wages. But the earnings are irregular, and the loans accumulate. “We are trapped in a recurring cycle of debt. Because of this, I could not even get my children educated. They are doing odd jobs for survival now,” she says. Burden on the bodyAs Selvalakshmi, 45, steps out of the salt pan after nearly four hours of work, she reaches for her neck. “… my neck hurts,” she exclaims with a weary smile. But there is no time to rest. She has to leave for her second job.Widowed after her husband died of kidney disease, Selvalakshmi works two jobs to make ends meet. Once she finishes harvesting salt, she heads to a nearby cashew processing unit, where she removes the husk from cashew kernels. The work is paid on a piece-rate basis — ₹35 a kilogram.
Selvalakshmi leaves the salt pan for her second job. With no family support, she works multiple jobs to provide for her child.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
“Yesterday, I managed to finish only five kilograms,” she says. “It’s difficult because I go there after finishing work here. By then, I’m already exhausted.”Her husband, who had also worked in the salt pans, struggled with kidney disease before his death. In a 2023 study of seven Indian salt pans, published in the International Society of Nephrology, researchers from the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, led by Vidhya Venugopal, found that 87% of workers were exposed to unsafe levels of heat stress, while most consumed only about one litre of water during a workday. Many showed signs of dehydration and heat strain, and workers exposed to excessive heat were nearly three times more likely to have reduced kidney function.
Workers carry a few bottles of water from home and share them among themselves. On extremely hot days, the water is often over by 9 a.m., even though work continues for another two hours, followed by the commute home.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
More recently, a 2026 study by Prof. Venugopal published in Scientific Reports surveyed 1,560 outdoor workers across 11 districts in Tamil Nadu, including those employed in salt pans. The researchers found that workers exposed to higher levels of heat stress were 1.4 times more likely to report reduced productivity during summer, while their risk of heat-related illnesses — including dehydration, muscle cramps, headaches, nausea and fatigue — was more than twice as high.
A worker rests briefly after finishing her shift while her husband completes his work. There is no shade in this salt pan except for a few scattered prosopis bushes.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
An uncertain future For Sudha, 35, the workday does not end when she steps out of the salt pan. It is only then that another concern begins: finding drinking water.A resident of Pallampakkam village, she says there is no water because seawater intrusion has left the groundwater saline and unfit for drinking. “We’ve submitted petitions and even staged demonstrations, but we still don’t have drinking water,” she says. Residents depend largely on the neighbouring village for potable water.Like most women working in the salt pans, Sudha starts her day with only tea and biscuits before heading to work. Aches have become part of the job. “Every part of the body hurts. It’s always there,” she says.After work, some workers try to fill their bottles at a petrol bunk on the way home. But the shared autorickshaw that ferries them six to seven kilometres from their villages charges extra if it has to make the detour. Most instead rely on drinking water stored in cans at the salt pans by the lessee who manages the worksite, carrying home whatever they can.
Leaseholders, who often work alongside labourers, keep a small can of drinking water at the salt pan. After work, Sudha fills her bottle with the remaining water, as her village has no source of drinking water due to saline intrusion.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
In 2025, frequent summer showers brought the salt-making season to an abrupt end by June, nearly two months earlier than usual. Every rainy day means another day without work, which forces many families to borrow money to meet daily expenses. Workers say the State’s one-time financial assistance of ₹5,000 is nowhere near enough to sustain them through months without income.Salt pan workers are among the communities most vulnerable to a changing climate. Their livelihoods depend on long spells of hot, dry weather for salt to crystallise, yet a single untimely shower can halt production for days. As rainfall patterns become increasingly erratic and extreme weather events more frequent, the financial precarity of salt pan workers is only expected to deepen, researchers say.
Salt pan workers navigate an occupation that is as physically demanding as it is climate-dependent. Both their health and livelihoods are tied to the weather.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
With few factories in and around Marakkanam, some women turn to agricultural labour during the off-season. But even that is uncertain. As Marakkanam is a town panchayat, they are ineligible for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), leaving them with few safety nets when the weather cuts short the salt season.M. Krishnamoorthy, State vice president of the Unorganised Workers Federation, said the monsoon relief assistance should not be treated as charity and that the ₹5,000 support is inadequate to sustain workers through the off-season.“Salt is fundamental to everyday life. It is in every meal we eat and is used across industries. The workers who produce it deserve far better compensation,” he said, adding that the board should be made operational by levying a cess on salt traders to generate funds for the welfare of salt workers.
Despite carrying out nearly the same tasks as men, women in the salt pans earn substantially lower wages. Many also shoulder unpaid care and household work after returning home, compounding the physical toll of long hours under the sun.
| Photo Credit:
Geetha Srimathi
He further said that although the State had announced a dedicated welfare board for salt workers, it had failed to address the challenges faced by the community. An official in the Labour Department said the Tamil Nadu Salt Workers Welfare Board, announced in 2023, remains largely non-functional as the department is working out how it can be operationalised under the new labour codes. (This story is part of the Asian College of Journalism’s Climate Change Media Hub Mentorship Programme.)
تم النشر: 2026-07-22 05:55:00
مصدر: www.thehindu.com
