LOSING ITS SPARKLE

Changing market dynamics amid the global economic gloom have hit Surat’s thriving diamond polishing industry, leading to layoffs, financial distress and even suicides. Is it just a cyclical trend or an irreversible change?

- JUMANA SHAH

For a people who bring a shine to others’ lives, their own are filled with darkness. The diamond polishers of Gujarat, numbering an estimated 800,000, are finding themselves out of a livelihood that has been handed down to them over generations and which is the only vocation that they have ever known. According to industry insiders, some 15,000 people have lost their jobs in recent months. Unable to cope with the uncertainty, many of them are taking their own lives. Among them was 55-year-old Vinu Moradiya from Surat, who had lost his job this year, making it difficult for him to support his family of six. Driven by despair, he, his wife and their two younger children entered a pact and died by suicide in early June, leaving behind 25-year-old Rushita and her 22-year-old brother Parth. Heartbroken, Rushita, too, tried to take her own life three days later, but, thankfully, survived.

India may have exhausted its diamond mines long ago, but it has emerged as a world leader in the supply of cut and polished diamonds, thanks mostly to the business prowess of the diamantaires of Gujarat. Having imported roughs worth over Rs 1.4 lakh crore in FY23, the country’s exports of finished diamonds touched nearly Rs 2 lakh crore during the fiscal, or about 20 per cent of the world’s total. However, hit first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then the Ukraine-Russia war that curtailed the supply of rough diamonds to India, besides the cheaper lab-grown diamonds from China that have flooded the global markets, the business has been seeing a steady downturn. In the first quarter of this financial year (FY24), exports stood at about Rs 37,000 crore, a steep 24 per cent year-over-year (YoY) decline from Rs 48,350 crore in Q1FY23. The changed market dynamics have had the worst impact on those at the bottom of the pyramid—the diamond polishers and other small traders.