I have been receiving Red Flag from my friend who works in a garment factory in Bengaluru (India). I am in Surat, the second-largest city in the state of Gujarat. I work in a diamond-cutting factory. Ninety percent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished in Surat, employing one million people in the state.
Sparkling diamonds in Hollywood and Bollywood create demand for diamonds, amounting to $25 billion dollars annually. In Surat, more than 50,000 traders work in a diamond-shaped ultra luxurious high-rise building, with an air conditioning unit that filters out the smallest specks of dust. On the other side of Surat, hundreds of thousands of diamond workers begin their grinding, which lasts more than 16 hours.
I am one of them. On an average day, air quality is so poor that most of us are coughing by the time we arrive. The management gives us masks. The fan that circulates hardly helps as temperatures rise above 40 °C (104°F). But the most damaging to us are the fine dust particles that penetrate our lungs. When we go home, breathing becomes like you have climbed Mount Everest.
The Surat diamond business is intricately connected to Israel. When the Gaza war started, there was a serious disruption in the supply chain.
Then came another blow to the diamond industry. Trump imposed a 50% tariff on diamonds from India. The capitalist bosses forced workers to work twice as hard to make up the losses. They laid off thousands of workers, eliminated health benefits, paid vacation, family leaves, and even stopped supplying mandatory masks.
They reduced or closed dilapidated clinics that treated patients with respiratory illnesses. There is only one functioning hospital with X-ray machines to examine patients’ lungs. And you would not believe that the same X-ray machines are used by thousands of diamond workers to examine diamonds, removing imperfections that only X-rays can detect.
I am 22 years old, and at the end of my shift, I can’t breathe. People who receive diamond rings, necklaces, and jewellery as a symbol of love and an unforgettable memory will not see the harsh conditions of the workers suffering from breathing problems, family separations, and living in crowded slums. Many succumb to untimely deaths from lung cancer.
I have to admit that my friend was sending Red Flag regularly, but I did not read it carefully. I only looked at the headlines as I was utterly exhausted at the end of the day. But the headlines that I read from Red Flag are haunting me now. I am unemployed like thousands of others.
I started reading about the garment industry in Bengaluru and in El Salvador. It opened my eyes to many other things. I came to the conclusion that we are all workers, suffering under the worst conditions, while the capitalists enjoy the wealth we have created in their mansions, palaces, five-star hotels, and resorts.
I will read Red Flag because it is offering a communist solution to the disasters of the profit system.
—Young worker in Surat (India)