Word: diamonde
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Local lore has it that a Surat entrepreneur, returning with a boatload of diamond cutters from East Africa, set up the city's polishing industry in 1901. Business picked up in the 1970s, when India began cutting low-quality gemstones and exporting them to the U.S. Although Bombay is the commercial center of India's diamond business, its militant labor unions have increasingly driven the polishers to Surat, where wages for diamond cutters are lower, at $2,500-$3,500 a year, and workers are more pliable. In the past, Surat's diamond industry has been a hot spot...
...Most diamond cutters, who come from poor villages around Surat, can expect to do well for themselves as they accumulate experience: a senior cutter can demand $5,000-$7,500 a year. At Blue Star, another Surat company, a glistening phalanx of employees' motorbikes parked outside proves that the workers have made it into the middle class...
...Cheap labor allowed India to find a niche for itself in the diamond-polishing business, but that wasn't the country's only edge. The Surat diamond trade was built by a dynamic and enterprising religious community?the Palanpuri Jains, followers of an ancient religion that emphasizes nonviolence and vegetarianism. Jains account for 0.4% of India's population. The Palanpuris, who hail from the town of Palanpur in the Indian state of Gujarat, form a close-knit community that thrives in the atmosphere of secrecy and informality that envelops the diamond trade?there are often no written contracts, many transactions...
...Palanpuris are starting to eye even bigger game. Long known for churning out lower-quality diamonds, Surat's workshops are now moving into larger, pricier stones. It's an irresistibly lucrative market, with the costliest 10% of stones accounting for half of the value of all the world's diamonds. These top-quality stones are still mostly cut in Antwerp, New York and Tel Aviv, where many of Surat's companies have set up branches in which Indian diamond cutters are absorbing skills from local experts. Arjav Mehta, whose family owns Blue Star, says his company has hired 15 master...
...Although relations between the Palanpuris and the Hasidim are cordial, Surat's diamond traders admit that India's sudden rise to prominence has caused some resentment in Israel and Belgium. One Israeli analyst frets that Surat's bustling workshops are flooding retail stores with diamonds, which could depress prices for years to come. ABN AMRO's Patnaik points out, however, that the market for diamonds could expand quickly as the burgeoning middle classes of China and India develop more of a taste for diamond jewelry. To make sure they secure a foothold in the Chinese market, some Surat businessmen have...