Date-23-5-2018
Today we started our journey at 6:00 am for the second field visit. Salt farming on low water table was explored on the next day, the first thing we noticed was the walls of the well and its depth and the mechanism they were using to dig those wells and to come out of the wells. We found that some of the wells had cemented walls in order to avoid any chance of collapse being 20 Ft deep. The farmer informed us that the collapse of well takes place while digging and re-digging of the well for usage. Well collapse also account for the dead of farmers in the katch.
On further, interaction with the farmer we got to know the entire process of motor fitting, boring and well connections
A special kind of pipe is used for boring process which has spare like base which is used to dig. This tool is rotated and at the same pushed downwards to displace the soil and create a vertical hole; the length of the tool is flexible with the initial base having a length of 10ft on which another pipe of 20ft is mounted to get a bore depth of 30ft. After this process of boring, a pipe of adult palm diameter is fitted into the hole.
If the water table is critically low than 2 or 3 wells are connected through an underground channel, in this manner the motor gets water equivalent to fully charged well. The underground pipes of three wells are brought to a junction where the motor is placed to pump the water out.
We observed too much sparrows over their and asked about the presence. He told that the sparrows are used as a tool to detect the presence of toxic gas in the well, currently we are terming this method as a bird method.
In bird method a pigeon or a sparrow is dropped into the well and if it dies within minutes, it signifies the presence of gas. He also described about his second best method in which there is no wild life harm; fire torch method. In fire torch method a fire torch is hang down into the boring pipe and if it blows off, it signifies the toxic gas.
Day 2 (Afternoon)
Salt industry after the salt farm visit we were curious to know the ending manufacturing process so we visited the salt industry, there we saw huge heap of salt crystals and the remarkable thing about the crystals were that they were almost firm. We observed the entire process from crushing the crystals to getting iodized and packaging. One thing which troubled us that the laborers were not using gloves while ceiling the salt packets using electric conducting rod.
Day 2 (Evening)
We visited the village (kharagoda new) of salt farmer having its history right from British regime. We met those families who lost members due to toxic gas expulsion and understood the entire process of salt farming in details; Enquired about each chance of toxic gas expulsion during the entire process.