The exploitation is so much that manufacturers observe no labour laws, no minimum wages acts and not even migrant workers law while hiring these labourers who work barefoot from dawn to dusk in knee-deep brines.

Most workers work seven days a week, nine months a year and live in the midst of salt pans.

According to a National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), pilot project report, "as against a selling price of Rs 1 to 2 per kg, only 4.5 to 5 paise trickle down to these marginal workers. The rest is siphoned off between traders and retailers. At the end of the year, a family on an average earns about Rs 5,000. Each family is forced to pay Rs 350 per year for fresh water. Only one-third of them can afford a bath once a week and the luxury of 15 litres of water per day.

The death of over 1,000 workers,with as many reported missing or feared dead, in the severe cyclone of June, has exposed how voiceless these faceless workers are -- whether dead or alive.

All these figures are based on estimates. There are no official records of the number of people working at the salt pans even in normal times, with the government or with the owners of salt works or agarias as they are locally called. As per the records of Central Salt Commissionerate, about 80,000 families are engaged in salt farming in Gujarat. There is no mention of how many people are there in each family. Even this figure is based on an assumption that five to 10 workers are required to prepare a 10-acre plot or pan.

There are also disputes over the number of people who must have perished in the three-metre high tidal waves that accompanied the storm last month and affected vast stretches of shallow salt pans.

The other issue that defies all reasoning is as to why did the salt workers alone bear the brunt of the fury. Out of the finaltally of 1,173 confirmed deaths due to the cyclone, about 1,000 are suspected to be salt workers. It is again suspected because, by the state government's own admission, about 750 bodies thus recovered could not be identified. As if to finally cap the issue, the government had issued orders on June 12 that those bodies should be disposed of fast, arguing that these decomposing bodies could pose danger to the people's health.

As a senior official said on the condition of anonymity, either the warning issued by Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) 48 hours in advance about an impending severe cyclone did not reach the owners of these salt pans, or the latter ignored the warning. Usually, the owners of the the salt pans wind up before the monsoon hits the Saurashtra coast in the second week of June in normal years. This time they didn't.

Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel claims that the port authorities were alerted and so also the fishermen. The district authorities too evacuated people from severallow-lying areas in Porbandar, Jamnagar, Rajkot and Kutch districts. Obviously, the salt workers weren't on the priority list.

Not all salt pans washed away in the cyclone belonged to the unorganised sector; many are owned by big salt works. The state labour minister Ashok Bhatt has asked for muster rolls from the owners, but the latter have just failed to do, finding an handy alibi that all records have been washed away. On the contrary, they are now asking for compensation and concessions from the government.

Seven weeks have passed since then. No sincere efforts seem to have been taken to pinpoint the responsibility of these deaths or provide relief to relatives of the dead or improve the working condition of those who will return to these salt pans after the monsoon.

The other contentious issue is the absence of concern for the salt pan workers from any quarters. A host of leaders, including Atal Behari Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi, et al, visited Kandla and other ports. Extensive surveys were carried outto assess the extent of damage to the port structures and cargo, industrial units, communication links and hutments. But no agency, not even the so-called human rights organisation, has come forward to voice the neglected salt workers' plight.

A short notice question raised by Congress legislator Naresh Raval in the State Assembly on July 7 was all that was heard from a public forum. Social Welfare Minister Fakir Vaghela told the House that both the owners of these salt works and the salt commissionarate were still not able to ascertain the exact number of deaths.

There is dispute also over the extent of damage to the salt works due to the cyclone. Vaghela has put it at Rs 35 crore, estimating that one-fourth of the crop has been damaged. This is in sharp variance from the salt owners' claim.Gujarat produced about 90 lakh tonnes of salt, valued at Rs 135 crore at the gates of salt works. Other major salt producing states are Tamil Nadu (17 lakh tonnes) and Rajasthan (15 lakh tonnes). Out of 130 lakhtonnes of salt produced in the country, half is used for eating and the other half for chloro-alkali industries, exporting six to seven lakh tonnes to neighbouring countries.

As per the estimates of deputy salt commissioner at Ahmedabad R Mohan, the loss should not be more than Rs 60 crore, since it was the last crop. The first crop takes about 45 days, subsequent ones 15 to 30 days, depending upon the methods adopted.

He said it was true that the cyclone severely hit Kutch, Jamnagar and Rajkot districts that produce over 60 per cent of the state's total salt production. But, it has not washed away their entire capacity as claimed by the salt pan owners.

Mohan did not agree with popular sentiment that salt farming is a losing business. He pointed out that there were 380 private units which produced over 90 per cent of the state's total salt production. They included such big corporates houses like Tata Chemicals (18 lakh tonnes), Birla VXL (9 lakh tonnes), GHCL (8.5 lakh tonnes), each having their owncaptive farms. He said that salt farming left enough profit margin.

He said the only law that governs the salt industry was the Central Excise and Salt Act of 1944, later amended as the Salt Cess Act, 1953. The central salt commissioner based at Jaipur is the implementing agency, with regional offices at Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and Ahmedabad.

To a question if shifting the salt commissioner's office from Jaipur to Gandhinagar would help Gujarat, Mohan said that about Rs 20 lakhs collected as cess from the licensed salt pans in Gujarat would not be enough even to meet the commissionarate's expenditure of Rs four crore per annum.