10 Manipur families struggle to keep alive dying salt cake culture

Local women engaged in traditional art of making salt cakes at a work shed in Manipur’s Ningel village. Pic/PTI

In the days of yore, Manipur kings gifted salt cakes made in Ningel as a mark of their appreciation, but now just 10 families of the village are tenuously holding on to the dying art to eke out a meagre living.

The cakes, which are circular discs of salt manufactured by boiling saline water from wells, have yielded their pride of place to the ubiquitous modern-day packaged salt. The use of the salt cakes is now confined to religious functions related to mainly births and weddings.

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With the dwindling use of these salt cakes by people, most families of Ningel village in Thoubal district are moving to other professions. Ningel is the lone village where the salt cakes are made and the number of wells, from where the saline water is drawn, has now come down to three from six earlier. The condition of the famous salt wells in the village have deteriorated due to lack of maintenance and excavation in the nearby hilly areas, said former village pradhan M Ingocha.

Officers of both private companies and the government had visited Ningel many times in the past and expressed their eagerness to preserve the dying art in view of its historic importance. "But no assistance was provided to people despite petitions," Ingocha told PTI. Lata, another salt cake-maker in her 50s, said the major difficulty lay in procuring wood to boil the saline water as it is very costly. "Besides, our work sheds are in very poor condition".

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