When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, residents of Surat, India could not have imagined that a war thousands of miles away would lead to a suicide problem in their community.
Surat — a city in the western state of Gujarat — is the hub of India's diamond industry, which employs over 600,000 people.
Workers in Surat are responsible for cutting and polishing 80% of the world's diamonds, according to industry statistics.
Surat's diamond industry was already facing many problems — floods in Africa, falling demand from the West, stuttering exports to China — when the war began in February 2022.
What followed was a massive wave of Western sanctions against Russia, which also included Russian diamonds, and Surat was suddenly facing a deep financial crisis.
How is the war in Ukraine causing the financial crisis in Surat?
Russia's invasion prompted the European Union and G7 to ban imports of Russian diamonds via third countries, severely limiting access to key raw material used by India's diamond industry.
When the ban came into effect on March 2022, it cut off nearly a third of India's diamond revenue.
At least 63 diamond polishers have committed suicide in Surat in the past 16 months. Several left suicide notes blaming financial distress, according to local media reports. Many thousands of others have lost their jobs or are facing staggering salary cuts.
\"Over 30% of India's raw material supply came from Russia's Alrosa mine,\" said Dinesh Navadiya, regional chairman of the Gem and Jewelry Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) which was formed under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. \"That lost business still hasn't recovered,\" he told DW.
Jagdish Khunt, president of Surat's diamond traders association, has a similarly bleak perspective.
\"From the first bombardment of the Russia-Ukraine war, things have only worsened for us,\" he said.
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