Saurashtra diamond industry hit hard by drought

Drinking water shortage worries diamond units, stalls new recruitments in the industry

Diamond industry in the draught-hit Saurashtra region of Gujarat is facing a critical condition. The labour-intensive diamond cutting and polishing industry in this region is faced with severe drinking water shortage for the comparatively large employee base of the units.

The unit owners depend on costly water from private sources to fulfill the thirst of their employees. This has resulted in reluctance from the diamond players to make new recruitments. The situation has become grave over the past couple of months in the select pockets of diamond polishing in Saurashtra region predominantly in Amreli and Bhavnagar districts.

“A large number of workers are ready to join diamond industry now, since there is no employment in agriculture due to drought. We have the capacity to absorb a significant part of the available workforce, but we are unable to do that. This is because there is no water to fulfill the thirst of our employees,” said Lalit Thumar, president of Diamond trade body of Amreli district.

According to Thumar, the Amreli district gets water for an hour in every 9 days. While most of the water is being catered to households, the industry has to depend largely on the private water suppliers, who charge around ' 800 -1000 for a tanker of 10,000 liters of water.

The district has close to 1500 diamond polishing units, employing around 45,000 workers. “Last year, the worker strength in diamond industry was 60,000 but many of them left for agricultural work. Now, they want to return to diamond industry. But unfortunately the situation doesn’t permit even if we wish to employ them,” Thumar informed adding that the industry won’t survive for long in such a situation. “The coming months appear to be the worst testing time for entire Saurashtra region. We have not seen such a crisis in the past 20 years,” he said.

The nearby Bhavnagar district is no different. The district houses around 2000 units employing close to 200,000 diamond workers. The situation is even worse here.

“There are four main diamond polishing pockets in Bhavnagar. Every taluka has its own reservoir and some units do have bore-wells. But the reservoirs are empty for past two months and the water levels in bore-wells is depleting fast,” said Vitthal Mendapara, a diamond trader in Bhavnagar.

The Bhavnagar city gets water for an hour at every alternate day, while in the rural area this frequency is once in a week, he claimed. The government administration of both the districts was not immediately available for comments on the same.

“There is no option for us but to purchase water at high prices for our employees. Every unit employs an average of 100-150 workers. This adds to the already high costs of rough diamonds, which has surged by 20 per cent in a year,” said Mendapara.

Major diamond polishing centers in Saurashtra include Botad, Gariadhar, Mahuva and Palitana in Bhavnagar district. They procure rough diamonds from auctions and sale the polished goods to the traders in Surat.