Asian Window

Neeta Lal at Asia Sentinel:

Kishore Hali, 22, a diamond polisher at an industrial unit in Saurashtra, in India’s western state of Gujarat, was the sole breadwinner of his eight-member family. When his unit shut its doors last month, the youth struggled with a $400-debt before jumping into a well to kill himself.

Nor is Hali alone. At least 70 diamond industry workers in Gujarat, one of India’s poorest states, have committed suicide over the past few months as the state’s storied diamond industry has sunk into depression. Nearly 60 percent of Gujarat’s diamond industry has closed. Gujurat accounts for 72 percent of the world’s processed diamonds and 80 percent of India’s diamond exports. About 92 percent of the world’s diamonds cut in 2003 were in Surat.

The Surat diamond industry alone is worth Rs8 billion – or was – and accounted for more than half of India’s diamond exports, an industry that employs more than 700,000 workers across the country. Overall, about 2.5 million are associated indirectly with the diamond trade in India. But with the export market in a recession, layoffs and suicides have cast an ominous shadow over the state’s 10,000-odd diamond units.

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