Surat: For the last three months, Rakeshbhai Dabhi and his wife have been selling vegetable soup at a stall around 7:30 pm daily on a street in Surat. The name of his stall, ‘Ratnakalakar’ (a diamond worker), draws curious glances.
Prod a little, Dabhi, 43, reveals the hardship that he and hundreds of diamond workers are facing due to closure of several small- and medium-sized businesses in Gujarat’s diamond city due to a slump in demand.
A diamond worker involved from cutting to polishing, Dabhi had worked for 18 years in the bylanes of Surat. Yet, his pay is down from Rs 1,200-1,300 per day to Rs 600-700.
Left with no option, the couple now opens the make-shift shop every day for running the family. Dabhi’s wife is scared that Dabhi might take extreme steps just like her brother, a diamond worker, who ended his life in May owing to financial stress.
“My salary as a diamond worker is not enough. So, she suggested that we come up with a food business. My wife says she will help me with this business to manage our finances. She is the family’s pillar of support now,” Dabhi told ThePrint.
Not all are lucky like Dabhi, as many diamond workers—often the sole earning member of their families—have taken the extreme step to end their lives under duress after losing their jobs.
Once known for its flourishing business, Surat is grappling under economic slowdown for the past few years. The drop in demand for diamonds in the international market is leading to a slowdown in the industry.
Many diamond workers that ThePrint spoke to said how the situation has not improved and every day in some factory or the other, a hapless worker is either losing pay or job altogether.
The 10-hour shifts went down to 7-8 hours as work went down following the slump, they said. Salaries of daily wage earners fell as well, they added.
“I will have to think about what I will do post-Diwali. Even my manager doesn’t know what to do. My salary during this Diwali month went down from Rs 25,000 to Rs 12,000. This type of situation is the first of its kind for diamond industry,” a worker said
A total of 71 diamond workers have died by suicide in the last 18 months in Surat, according to the Diamond Workers Union Gujarat (DWUG). As many as 45 of these cases were reported in the last one year of which 31 took place in last six months.
Financial instability coupled with unemployment are the main drivers of suicides in Surat. To deal with it, the DWUG came up with a helpline in July. Since its launch, the helpline has received over 2,500 distress calls from workers.
“When these suicides started, we wrote to the Gujarat labour minister urging him to provide some financial assistance to these workers and their families. But the government did not move. Instead of doing nothing, we decided to launch this helpline,” DWUG vice-president Bhavesh Tank told ThePrint.
“And if concrete steps are not taken by the government, this trend of suicides won’t stop even as we are trying our best to identify such people and help them.”
According to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council’s (GJEPC) September report, the overall gross export of cut and polished diamonds stood at $1,290.89 million (Rs 10,822.37 crore), a decline of 22.87 percent as compared to $1,673.56 million (Rs 13,892.3 crore) for the same period of the previous year.
As for imports of cut and polished diamonds, it was down by 20.11 percent to $126.3 million (Rs 1,058.42 crore) from $158.1 million (Rs 1,312.73 crore).
ThePrint reached Gujarat industries minister Balwant Singh Rajput and Surat police commissioner Anupam Singh Gahlaut via phone for the steps taken by the administration and police force to help the stressed workers. This report will be updated once a response is received.
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‘Never told me how stressed he was’
According to DWUG, there are about 8-10 lakh diamond workers in Surat and overall, about 25 lakh workers in Gujarat. Most of these workers are neither permanent nor registered employees on the payroll. While a large chunk of the workforce is from Saurashtra, there are many from faraway states such as Odisha and Karnataka.
“Things were good in this industry. In 2008, during the recession, there were rumblings but not like this,” Dabhi said.
However, in the past two years post Covid, things started going down from bad to worse.
“In the last two and half years, the economic slowdown hit the market. The salaries have halved and this added to woes,” Tank said. “A worker can withstand (difficulties) for a month or two somehow. But this slowdown has lasted for years now.”
Nikunj Tank, a 28-old diamond worker who was working for three years in this sector, was found hanging from the fan in his room on 2 August. He is survived by his old parents, wife, and a 15-month daughter.
His father Jayantibhai told ThePrint that his son had a debt of about Rs 4 lakh. “His monthly salary was not increased and remained at Rs 15,000 till his end. I knew about the loan, but he never told me how stressed he was. That day I was downstairs, and he was in his bedroom upstairs. Around 3.30-4 pm when I went up to check on him, I found him hanging… He was the only breadwinner of our family,” Jayantibhai said.
A down and out Vinubhai Parmar, 45, another diamond worker, was lucky to have come across the DWUG helpline.
Dismissed from work three months ago, he said the reason mentioned for his sacking was slowdown.
“When they told me to not come for work, I got very anxious and returned home. There, I learnt that my wife had got electrocuted and had collapsed. All my savings went to footing the bills of the hospital and aftercare. I was under trauma and pressure, but there was none to talk to,” he recalled.
Parmar, who had been working in the diamond industry for the past 35 years, gave a SOS call to Tank. “I told him everything about my condition and confided to him that I had no other option but to die. That is when these people explained it and made me understand (the futility of such action). They even provided a month’s ration kit,” he added.
Currently, he works as a daily wage earner at a factory that makes machinery for the diamond workshops.
Like Parmar’s case, Tank recalled another incident from a month agon wherein he got a call from a worker saying he is about to commit suicide. He alerted his team on the ground, and the man was brought to the office. For the initial two hours, he kept on crying, Tank remembered.
“We let him cry. Then he said that he has been fired and his financial condition is very bad. There was no food or anything at his house. We called his wife at the office and spoke to them. We helped him initially, and now he and his family are in a slightly better condition,” Tank said.
The DWUG members take updates and feedback of those callers who use the helpline to ensure their well-being. Though not professional counsellors, they continuously keep talking to such workers to uplift their morale.
Changing face of industry
As for diamond merchants and traders, a large section of them attributed the slowdown to the Ukraine-Russia and Gaza-Israel wars and domestic factors like the dip in the demand for natural diamonds for the present situation.
Manoj Kachariya, a diamond trader and merchant at Surat’s biggest gem market in Mahidharpura area, agreed that the market for the precious stone was going through a bad time.
“My stock price now has nosedived 50 percent at least. I normally used to export diamonds, but my regular clients from the international market are not ready to buy at this point,” he said.
Another major factor is the advent of lab-grown diamonds. Although it takes the same number of hours and workers to design and cut lab-grown diamonds, they are a lot cheaper, just about one tenth of the price of mined diamonds. The industry’s rise began in 2018, and has grown seven times since then.
Dipesh Dhanak, a merchant who deals with lab-grown diamonds, also known as CVD (chemical vapour deposition) diamonds, said that the government is now encouraging these diamonds in the industry.
“There is confusion among merchants. The demand for natural diamonds has slumped by 40-50 percent and so there is no work for workers as such, and that is also why we are seeing massive layoffs. But having said that, it does not mean that CVD is booming. Even that is picking up slowly,” Dhanak said.
Another diamond merchant, who also deals with providing machinery for industry players, said that there is a crisis in the industry worldwide.
“So, our exports have suffered. The profit margin has come down in the business. Natural diamonds cost a lot more than CVD, although a layman cannot make out the difference look-wise. So people started preferring the CVD. But even there, the market has hit a roadblock,” he said.
“For instance, the price of a natural diamond costing Rs 4 lakh in 2018 has come down to say Rs 2.5 lakh. In the case of CVD, a Rs 50,000 diamond has dropped to Rs 10,000. So a person would prefer that Rs 10,000 diamond.”
Many merchants shifted to CVD when its demand shot up but this rush added to the supply glut and hence now even this trade is suffering, diamond merchants explained.
“As diamond costs dropped, so did the cost of labour and salaries got impacted. But we are not completely at fault. The buyers have dropped their prices but for us, the cost of growing the diamond in the lab is still the same. We are at our wit’s end,” one of them said.
Though the workers can be moved from natural to CVD factories, Dhanak said, it will take some time. “It cannot happen immediately. It is a process.”
Many big traders of natural diamonds are not able to shift to lab grown diamonds, and some of them are shutting their factories instead, he added.
‘There is no work here’
For the past three–four months, with the help of Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), DWUG has provided ration kits lasting about one month to 250 families. School fees of children from 150 families were taken care of. “Another 200 families will be helped in the near future,” Tank said.
In September, the DWUG wrote a letter to Gujarat home minister Harsh Sanghavi seeking his intervention to check the trend of suicides involving distressed diamond workers.
“We need police help in our campaign and they should take initiative in even running this campaign. We also demand that the investigation into these suicides must be done properly. Whosoever is the accused, the person needs to be given strict punishment,” the letter states.
ThePrint has accessed the contents of the letter.
Later, the Gujarat home minister spoke to Surat police commissioner, who then asked all assistant commissioners of police to look into the points highlighted by the union.
Back at the roadside stall, Dabhi is clear about what he wants to do next as he and his wife are happy with the ‘Ratnakalakar’ soup stall. “I don’t want to get into this diamond industry. There is no work here. I am now thinking of starting another business, maybe in the food sector,” he said.
(If you are feeling suicidal or depressed, please call a helpline number in your state)
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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