The only shutter still up on a street in one of Amreli’s once-bustling diamond lanes is of Lalit Thummar’s garishly decorated office. Flanking it are many small diamond polishing units on their way to ruin, dust heavy on the shutters, stray dogs taking over the shop fronts.

Thummar is president of the Amreli District Diamond Association and spokesperson for the Gujarat Diamond Federation. “Till recently, we had 1,451 polishing units in Amreli, and over 60,000 workers. Only 223 are functional and that too only nominally. At least 57,000 men have already lost their jobs. There were 259 units in just this part of the city alone, but you will see only six open now,” says Thummar.

That would have been inconceivable even six months ago. This was an industry clocking an annual turnover of Rs 15 billion in Gujarat and employing over 8 lakh workers, accounting for 72 per cent of the world’s processed diamonds and some 85 per cent of India’s diamond exports. It logged 13.4 per cent of the country’s forex revenues last year.

Diamonds had also drastically changed much of the Saurashtrian ruralscape and economy, pumping in more money than farming ever did. More than 85 per cent of Gujarat’s diamond workers belong to the Saurashtrian belt, and Amreli alone accounts for over two-and-a-half lakh workers.

Once diamonds used to rain money, even on a place as small as Amreli. It was a largely unorganised and grey sector where not many Income Tax returns were filed and audits were rare, but the turnover was huge. Thummar says assuming that each of the 60,000 workers within Amreli was making only a modest 0.40 carat of polished diamonds a day from 1 carat of rough stone, 60,000 carats of rough stones would produce 24,000 carats of diamonds in Amreli alone. The average price of 60,000 carats of rough stones is about Rs 15 crore, and the average price of 24,000 carats of polished diamonds works out to a daily Rs 24 crore.

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