Mitosh Patel, 38, is a school dropout. He earns about ₹18,000 a month by spending about three hours a day cutting and polishing diamonds in a small room beside his house in Rajkot district of Gujarat. But he has not earned anything for the past 100 days due to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.
“I have not got the the raw diamond of patli (small) size which I cut and polish here in my house since the beginning of the war. The agents of big factories in Surat bring the raw material to my house and I get my payment as and when I finish my work. Some of my relatives and friends who are experts in cutting diamonds earn more than ₹1 lakh a month. They also haven’t got any work in the past 100 days,” Mr. Patel says.
Mr. Patel is among the roughly five lakh people in rural Gujarat who are engaged in cutting and polishing of diamonds for nearly two generations. The non-availability of raw material, mostly from Russia, has left them jobless for over three months now.
