(2 of 4)
Jaipur, capital of the colorful Rajasthan state, is the world's largest and most diversified center for cutting and polishing colored gemstones. Last year India imported $83 million worth of colored gemstones and exported $193 million in finished stones, according to the country's Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council. And 55% of the world's diamond supply in value terms (85% of volume) is processed in India and traded in Bombay, now known as Mumbai.
INDIA'S SUCCESS IN information technology derives from calculated public policy, but its predominance in jewelry is an anthropologist's affair: 5,000 years of sea and caravan trading with Arabia, Greece and Rome. "Plenty of rubies, plenty of emeralds! You should thank God for having brought you to so rich a country!" Vasco da Gama was told when he sailed into Calcutta in 1497. Most Indian mines were exhausted by the late 19th century, but the gems kept coming. And whether they were commoners buying "1-g bangles" or royals commissioning turban ornaments, Indians were always mad for jewelry.
"People believed in wealth that the eye could see," says Princess Esra Jah, the Turkish-born former wife of the grandson of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, over tea at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Bombay. Her work for the family's ambitious restoration of Hyderabad's Chowmahalla Palace as a museum is much admired, and nobles hope the family will be allowed to display permanently the Nizam's fabled jewel collection, which was acquired by the Indian government in 1995.
There is a widespread consensus in India that gems can improve one's health and destiny: family astrologers order pearls to cool tempers and emeralds to boost teenage boys' school grades. Princess Diya Kumari, 35, daughter of the maharajah of Jaipur, wears a large diamond pendant and earrings and a small evil-eye ring during her afternoon stroll at the palace. When Jaipur was built, beginning in 1727, her ancestors offered tax incentives to lure talented craftsmen, including jewelry workers, and their descendants continue to work all over the city.
Top-quality beads are just one Gem Palace specialty, and Kasliwal grabs several strands of garnets to demonstrate the differences. "This one is artisanal production, each bead carefully drilled, each one faceted by hand. The Tiffanys of the industry will buy this one, and the average worker could produce 20 or 30 beads a day," he says. A second strand looks duller and less uniform. "These have been tumbled in a machine and then finished. A worker can produce 800 of these a day." The artisanal strand wholesales for $70 to $80; the industrial one costs $2.
We duck into a room where four men execute pieces in the traditional enamel and kundan technique, in which narrow ribbons of pure gold are wedged around the stone. "The gold is so pure the workers cannot touch it," Kasliwal says. He nods at a packet of uncut rubies. "Burmese, exceptional quality. They already have so much life," he says, valuing them at $1.5 million, and then he takes a call from the royal family of Qatar.