The Dark Core of a Diamond

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There are more than 4,000 workers in this factory, which is the largest one in Surat and claims to be the largest diamond-polishing facility in the world. The owner, Chandrakant Sanghavi, told me he moves more than 10 million diamonds out of his plant every year. Diamonds were the revolution India needed, he said. They were bringing jobs and housing to people who had nothing before. In less than a decade of wild growth, the stones had affected the household economies of 10 million people in the state of Gujarat—meaning that person, or somebody in his or her family, had a job polishing diamonds 12 hours a day at 10¢ a stone. This was a mass of people equivalent to the population of Los Angeles. "We are doing something big here," said Sanghavi. "This will change India."

This was the genius of India. It takes in the garbage of the diamond world, slaps 58 facets on it, sets it in gold and sends it on. These tiny specks are now the fifth most valuable export of a nation that hasn't mined diamonds from its own soil for more than a century. India's factories, processing an astonishing 92% of the world's diamonds today, have stolen the majority of business away from the old master craftsmen of New York City, Israel and Belgium.

Japan
The Japanese had no need for diamonds. The engagement ring had no place in their historical notion of romance. No rings were ever exchanged. But in the mid-1960s, the De Beers cartel looked at Japan and saw potential. The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency was hired to flood the Japanese media with advertising touting the rings as a symbol of Western sexuality and prosperity. In 1966 less than 1% of Japanese women received a diamond ring when they married. By 1981 that figure had rocketed to 60%. And after another decade of sustained advertising, close to 90% of Japanese brides got diamond rings when they married. Japan had become the world's second largest consumer of diamonds.

How do you get rid of something like this? A friend suggested that I post it on eBay. I could hurl it into the Atlantic Ocean. I could sell it back to a jeweler. But then I would be contributing, in a tiny way, to a trade that brings misery to millions of people across the world. In the end, this seemed my only option. The jeweler, a gregarious man, chatted with me as he worked on the gold prongs that held the diamond in place. "What's going to happen to it?" I asked. "I'll put it into a new setting, try to sell it in the store," he said. I looked at it for what I knew would be the last time. Its memory would be erased the second I walked out the door.