Surat's diamond industry loses shine: Factory closures, job losses, & falling orders hit hard
Surat's diamond industry loses shine
Surat's diamond business is in crisis due to declining global demand and competition from lab-grown diamonds. Workers face job losses and reduced wages, leading to economic hardships. Some have turned to alternative jobs like street vending and online content creation. Factory closures and suicides among workers highlight the severity of the situation.
A steep, narrow, barely lit staircase leads to Vinubhai Parmar’s rooftop room in Surat. Inside, folding beds and scattered kitchenware hint at a life in distress. His teenage sons, Shivam and Dhruv, sit cross-legged on the floor, doing their homework. At 18, Shivam has come to terms with the upheaval at home after his father, a ratna-kalakar or diamond polisher, lost his job in early July. Dhruv, in Class VIII, is undeterred. “I will keep studying. I want to be a computer engineer,” he says.
Parmar, 47, is desolate. In 2005, he left Bhavnagar, a district in Gujarat’s Saurashtra region, for Surat, looking forward to a bright future in its booming diamond industry.
Those hopes have now turned to dust. “I don’t know how I will continue my children’s education. We are barely managing to afford two meals a day. I had to borrow from friends and family,” he says. After nearly two decades of polishing gems, he says, “All I see is darkness.” Surat is India’s diamond capital. The city processes 90% of the world’s rough diamonds by volume. But the light has gone out of Surat’s diamond streets. Now, the import of rough diamonds has plummeted due to weak global demand.
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