These are salt evaporation ponds in the Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India. Salt workers set up wells to pump salty water from underground deposits and collect it in huge square-shaped salt pans that are carved into the desert floor. From natural solar evaporation, the brine starts to concentrate, and the first layer of salt is formed. The brine is continually scraped with heavy wooden rakes to encourage the formation of salt crystals. Once the water has evaporated, the workers harvest the thick crust of salt and collect it in rows of piles next to the pan. This is mostly done by hand. More than 100,000 salt workers in the area harvest around thirty percent of the salt produced in India. It is an extreme region with temperatures reaching up to fifty degrees Celsius. Many of the workers are from the lowest caste and earn only about one dollar per ton of harvested salt, whereas the market price of industrial salt is around sixty-seven dollars per ton.