Gujarat&rsquo;s Diamond Workers Don&rsquo;t Need Sympathy &mdash; They Needed a System That Didn&rsquo;t Abandon Them
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The Gujarat government&rsquo;s recent announcement of a relief package for jobless diamond workers &mdash; a sector grappling with an unprecedented recession &mdash; is a textbook example of crisis management that arrives too late, does too little, and sidesteps the real issue: systemic failure.
The trigger for this belated empathy? Seventy-one reported suicides by distressed workers. That&rsquo;s not a policy prompt &mdash; that&rsquo;s a humanitarian tragedy. Yet, the state&rsquo;s response focuses not on structural reforms or institutional accountability, but on a narrowly targeted school fee assistance scheme, wrapped in bureaucratic red tape and moral grandstanding.
Let&rsquo;s unpack the facts.
A Package That Misses the Point
Under the announced relief, the Gujarat government will offer&nbsp;100% reimbursement of school fees&nbsp;&mdash; capped at ₹13,500 per child per annum &mdash; to children of unemployed diamond workers. The assistance will be routed through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to private school managements.
Eligibility, however, is tangled in bureaucracy. Workers must prove they lost employment&nbsp;after 31 March 2024, must be above 21, and have spent at least&nbsp;three years in the industry. They must also provide employment records or recommendation letters from&nbsp;District Labour Officers or Diamond Associations, and school documentation.
Nowhere in the announcement is there clarity on&nbsp;the total financial outlay, the number of beneficiaries estimated, or how the state intends to monitor disbursement and misuse. Worse, no government body &mdash; not the state Labour Department, not the Centre &mdash; has official data on&nbsp;how many diamond units have shut down&nbsp;or how many workers have been rendered jobless in the past 18&ndash;24 months.
What then is this package based on &mdash; guesswork?
The Invisible Workforce
Gujarat&rsquo;s diamond polishing industry &mdash; concentrated in Surat and accounting for over&nbsp;90% of global diamond cutting&mdash; employs over&nbsp;1.5 million workers. It&rsquo;s a labour-intensive, skill-dependent sector built on informal contracts and fragile social safety nets.
Most units, particularly smaller ones,&nbsp;aren&rsquo;t even registered&nbsp;under the Shops and Establishments Act or the Factory Act. This means workers have&nbsp;no social security, no PF accounts, no ESI, no retrenchment safeguards. When a factory shuts down, the worker vanishes from the state&rsquo;s records. His existence was never formally recognised.
And now, in the throes of recession, those same workers are being asked to furnish certificates from government officers and industry bodies who themselves have no data, no oversight, and no real connection to the worker&rsquo;s crisis.
Privatising Welfare, Outsourcing Responsibility
Even more troubling is where this relief money is going: not to the workers, but to&nbsp;private school managements. The money is routed through workers, but ends up subsidising private education &mdash; a sector already bloated with unregulated fees and minimal accountability. This isn't a rescue for workers &mdash; it&rsquo;s a backdoor bailout for private schools.
Why aren&rsquo;t government schools being strengthened? Why hasn&rsquo;t the state invested in professionalising and expanding public education &mdash; especially in industrial belts like Surat, Bhavnagar, and Amreli? Because over the years, Gujarat, in the name of&nbsp;fiscal prudence, has aggressively withdrawn from the education sector, favouring&nbsp;privatisation over public provision.
Between 2010 and 2022, Gujarat saw a steady&nbsp;decline in the number of government schools, particularly in urban and semi-urban areas where the diamond industry is concentrated. Grant-in-aid institutions have been squeezed, and teacher vacancies remain unfilled.
Had public schools been robust, the state wouldn&rsquo;t need to dish out aid to private institutions. The current crisis is a product of this deliberate neglect.
Ease of Doing Business &mdash; for Whom?
Let&rsquo;s be clear &mdash; this isn&rsquo;t just an economic downturn. This is the fallout of Gujarat&rsquo;s aggressive pursuit of the&nbsp;&ldquo;ease of doing business&rdquo;&nbsp;agenda. Labour laws have been systematically diluted. From&nbsp;removal of threshold protections&nbsp;in the Industrial Disputes Act to&nbsp;reduced inspections under the Factory Act, the framework that once provided basic security to industrial workers has been hollowed out.
In the name of attracting investment, labour has been made more &ldquo;flexible&rdquo; &mdash; read:&nbsp;disposable.
When diamond units started collapsing in late 2022 and early 2023 due to falling global demand and rising input costs, the workers had no fallback. Employers, largely unregulated, had no obligation to report closures, negotiate severance, or contribute to unemployment protection.
Had these factories been properly registered, had workers been part of a formal system with provident funds and layoffs subject to oversight, the state would not be scrambling today with a piecemeal education support plan. There would be&nbsp;automatic triggers for support, not post-facto crisis packages.
A State&rsquo;s Abdication, a Society&rsquo;s Burden
The broader issue here is one of state responsibility. Welfare is not charity. Relief packages are not compensation for regulatory neglect. They cannot be used as substitutes for long-term institutional protection.
Gujarat &mdash; once hailed as the engine of India&rsquo;s industrial growth &mdash; must now reckon with the costs of that growth. In its single-minded focus on capital and infrastructure, it has forgotten that&nbsp;economic resilience is built not just on investment, but on inclusion.
And let&rsquo;s not forget:&nbsp;this package was announced only after suicides made headlines. That too, without even an attempt to document the magnitude of job losses or mental health distress among workers. What is the value of a human life in a state that only sees economic units?
Tokenism Masquerading as Policy
What Gujarat needs is not another narrowly defined relief scheme. It needs a&nbsp;social contract:
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal">Mandatory registration of industrial units.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Enforced compliance with labour laws.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Public education that is not an afterthought.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">A social security net that activates&nbsp;before&nbsp;a crisis turns deadly.</li>
</ul>
Until then, relief packages like this one &mdash; launched in haste, limited in reach, and blind to history &mdash; will remain what they are:&nbsp;token gestures from a state that abandoned its workers long before their factories did.
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Token aid follows 71 suicides; systemic labour failures and privatisation go unaddressed

Gujarat’s Diamond Relief: Too Little, Too Late

Token aid follows 71 suicides; systemic labour failures and privatisation go unaddressed

May 25, 2025 | 11:56 IST