Bottle for buckets: No liquor, no water

Vijaysinh Parmar TNN Kharaghoda (Surendranagar): The only pools of water you see in the Little Rann of Kutch are mirages. They melt away into flying desert sand when you approach them. The salt pan workers or the ‘agariyas’ who inhabit this unforgiving landscape know there is only one way for them to quench their thirst — liquor. Not down their own throats; the booze is for drivers of the government water tankers. No liquor, no tankers. “Building rapport with drivers of government tankers is the only way we get water for free,” says Valiben Thakore, whose family owns a salt pan near the Kharaghoda range. “And, the best way to befriend them is to give them liquor. But, even then we can’t rely on them as the frequency depends on the drivers’ whims and fancies. So, we have to pay Rs 2,000 to private water suppliers between the months of October and May when we work in the salt pans.” Such are the conditions that salt pan workers are forced to agree to private suppliers’ exploitative terms. The government has only three tankers to cover the 5,000 square kilometres of the Rann, scattered with more than 30,000 salt pan workers. Despite the liquor, the tankers don’t come for days together. In the end, it is brisk business for private suppliers who charge money according to the number of salt pans, not according to the number of families. “I had to shell out Rs 3,600 as I have two salt pans,” says salt pan worker Jeram Thakore. “Besides, the large tankers that the government uses can’t navigate the slush and soft soil in the Rann between the months of October and December — a time when we start moving into the Rann. Government tankers start only in January,” says another salt pan worker Karmsi Thakore. “Private suppliers use tractors that can easily navigate the landscape. Many a time, private suppliers don’t provide drinking water, but we have no alternative.” “Pure drinking water is not meant for marginalized people,’’ says another salt pan worker Labhubhai Thakore. “We are already debt-ridden. The price of water is only adding to the back-breaking burden.”