Surat - worlds largest diamond processing center

Surat as the world's diamond-cutting capital

Surat cuts and polishes roughly nearly 90% of the diamonds globally, in an industry running on around 5,000 units employing upwards of 600,000 people. Other estimates put the figure even higher — 90% of all diamond cutting and polishing on the planet takes place in Surat, and older reports cite figures as high as 92 percent of the world's diamonds cut and polished in Surat. Either way, roughly 9 or 10 out of every 10 diamonds worn anywhere in the world passed through Surat's workshops. 

**How it works**

- India itself mines no significant rough diamonds — the raw stones arrive mostly from mines in Africa (and Russia), get shipped to Surat, and are cut, polished, and finished there before moving on to cutting centers like Antwerp, Israel, or Hong Kong for final trading and export as jewelry.

- The industry is built on skilled, low-cost labor — small karigars (artisans) trained in generations-old cutting techniques working alongside modern computerized planning and laser-cutting technology, which lets Surat handle both mass-market small stones and high-value pieces at scale.

- Diamond bourses and the massive Surat Diamond Bourse (one of the world's largest office complexes, built to consolidate the trade under one roof) anchor the formal trading side of the business.

**Economic significance**

- The cutting and polishing of diamonds for the global middle class has helped create close to 500,000 jobs in the city — a scale nearly half as large as India's entire IT industry, making it a major source of employment for migrant workers from across Gujarat and neighboring states. 

- The industry has historically leaned heavily on China as an export market — China has been Surat's second largest market at around 35% of total diamond exports, since polished stones are often set into jewelry there before re-export to the US and Europe.

**Boom-and-bust cycles**

The trade is highly exposed to global demand swings — the COVID-19 lockdown, for instance, left the industry sitting on an inventory worth around $2.3 billion when exports froze, and trade tensions, shifting demand (including competition from lab-grown diamonds, which Surat has also increasingly moved into), and price volatility periodically hit smaller units hardest while larger export houses tend to weather downturns. 

In short, Surat's status as a diamond hub is a modern extension of the same trading-city DNA that made it a Mughal-era port: a place where raw material from elsewhere in the world is transformed by concentrated craft skill and then sent back out to global markets.

Visit to Surat .. 11-12 Sept '26 ..

(Pic from Gemini AI)

Was pleasantly surprised to see good families having roadside dinner sitting on mats from roadside dhadas. Surat is also the second cleanest city in India, after Indore in MP. Could resonate myself with the Arab traders of 300 BC who traded that time in spices, ivory, cotton etc.. Today Surat is known for its diamond trade. 

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Cleanliness was great .. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

Surat today is best known for a few things:

- **Diamonds** — it's the world's biggest diamond-cutting and polishing hub, with over 92% of the world's diamonds cut there, and it houses the newly operational Surat Diamond Bourse, one of the largest office buildings in the world. 

- **Textiles** — it's called the textile city of Gujarat, with one of the oldest and most widespread textile industries in India, mainly polyester yarn production, weaving, processing, and embroidery, and it exports printed fabrics worldwide. 

- **Food** — Surat has a strong reputation as a food city, with street snacks like *locho* and the ghee-soaked sweet *ghari* being local specialties, and a saying that food in Surat is worth savoring.

- **Cleanliness and infrastructure** — it regularly competes with Indore for the title of India's cleanest city, and is known for wide boulevards and its BRTS transit system. 

- Sitting on the Tapi River, it also grew historically as a major port, and today it's a fast-growing commercial and industrial center in Gujarat.

So the "ancient" city you pictured in the illustration has become one of India's biggest business and manufacturing hubs — diamonds and textiles being the headline industries.

Medog hydel power station, Tibet, China

"How China Is Building the Impossible $167B Medog hydropower station in Tibet region of capacity 60GW, that Triples Three Gorges (22 GW) Power and 77x Idukki dam. (0.76 GW)"

The video covers the Medog Hydropower Station, China's mega-project on the lower Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet, which is being built as five cascade dams along a steep Himalayan gorge at the river's dramatic "Great Bend," with a projected installed capacity of roughly 60 GW and annual generation of up to 300 billion kWh. 

Construction officially began on 19 July 2025, with commercial operations planned for 2033, at a total investment exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan (roughly $170 billion). 

The site sits just 30 km from the contested India border, near where the river makes a dramatic U-turn around Namcha Barwa Peak, plunging nearly 2,000 meters over a 50-km stretch — the "deepest canyon on Earth".

The project's output would roughly equal the UK's total annual power consumption and triple that of the 22.5 GW Three Gorges Dam, making it the largest hydropower station on Earth once complete. It also carries significant geopolitical weight: India and Bangladesh worry that unilateral upstream flow regulation could worsen dry-season water scarcity or create flash-flood risks, since more than 130 million people in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Bangladesh depend on the Brahmaputra–Jamuna basin. 

Chinese officials maintain the dams are run-of-river and won't meaningfully cut cross-border flows, though transparency on reservoir operations remains limited. 

https://youtu.be/wjL7r4NglPA?si=qaWdRPr9ftfJF5Aj 

India among top 3 countries with private rocket launch capability

Only three countries globally have a private company (not a government space agency) that has actually put a payload into orbit:

1. United States — the original and by far the largest; SpaceX (first private orbital launch, 2008), Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and others

2. China — several commercial firms have reached orbit, including iSpace (Beijing Interstellar Glory, 2019), Landspace, and Galactic Energy

3. India — joined this list on July 18, 2026, when Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 reached a ~450 km orbit on its first attempt

Countries actively trying, but not yet there:

- Spain — PLD Space is targeting an orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket from French Guiana

- UK — Virgin Orbit's 2023 attempt failed, and Orbex (developing the Prime rocket) filed for insolvency in February 2026 — a real setback to British private orbital ambitions

- Japan, Germany, Australia — all have private launch startups in development, none has reached orbit yet .. 

- 🙏🙏👍👍

How medical fraternity fools the world

**This is reality, not a joke... 🙏**

**Read it. If you like it, please share it with others!!**

**!!!! Ultra-Modern Medical Science !!!!**  

**Dr. Ananya Sarkar**

For the past two or three days, you had a fever. Even without taking any medicine, you would have recovered naturally within a few days. Your body would have healed itself. But you went to see a doctor.

Right from the start, the doctor ordered a lot of tests. The reports didn't find any specific cause for the fever, but they showed slightly high cholesterol and blood sugar. These small changes are actually quite normal in most people.

The fever went away, but now you were no longer seen as just someone who had a fever. The doctor told you: "Your cholesterol is high and your sugar is a bit high. That means you are **pre-diabetic**." From now on, you would need medicines to control cholesterol and blood sugar. Along with that, many strict rules were given about food and drink.

You may not have followed the diet strictly, but you didn't forget to take the medicines.

Three months passed like this. When you did the next tests, cholesterol had come down a little, but now your blood pressure was found to be slightly high. Another medicine was added for that. Now you were taking **3 medicines**.

Hearing all this, you started feeling more anxious. "What will happen next?" Because of this worry, you began losing sleep. The doctor started giving you sleeping pills too. Now the total number of medicines became **4**.

After taking so many medicines, you developed acidity and heartburn. The doctor said, "You need to take a gas tablet on an empty stomach before food." The medicine count rose to **5**.

Six months passed like this. One day you suddenly felt chest pain and rushed to the hospital emergency. After checking everything, the doctor said, "You came just in time. Otherwise, something very serious could have happened." Several special tests were then advised.

After many expensive tests, the doctor said, "Continue the old medicines. Now we will add two more heart medicines." He also advised you to consult an **Endocrinologist** (hormone specialist). Now you were taking **7 medicines**.

Following the heart specialist's advice, you went to the endocrinologist. He added one more medicine for sugar and another for a slightly enlarged thyroid.

**Now your total number of medicines reached 9.**

In your mind, you started believing you were very sick — a heart patient, diabetic, insomnia patient, gas patient, thyroid patient, kidney patient, and so on.

No one told you that you could stay healthy by improving your willpower, confidence, and lifestyle. Instead, you were repeatedly told that you were a "seriously ill person" — weak, helpless, and broken!

After six more months, due to the side effects of all these medicines, you started having problems with urination. Routine tests then showed some issue with your kidneys. After more tests, the doctor said, "Creatinine level has increased a little, but if you keep taking the medicines regularly, there's nothing to worry about." Two more medicines were added.

**Now you were taking a total of 11 medicines.**

You were now consuming more medicines than food. Slowly, due to the many side effects of these medicines, you were moving towards death!!

---

If only the doctor had said this when you first went to him with the fever:

*"Don't worry. This is just a mild fever. You don't need any medicine. Take rest for a few days, drink plenty of water, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and go for morning walks. That's all. No need for medicines."*

But then how would the doctor and the pharmaceutical companies fill their pockets?

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**The biggest question is:** On what basis do doctors declare people as having high cholesterol, high BP, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, etc.?

**Who decides these standards?**

Let us understand this in more detail:

- **In 1979**, blood sugar above 200 mg/dl was considered diabetes. At that time, only **3.5%** of the world's population was considered to have Type-2 diabetes.

- **In 1997**, under pressure from insulin manufacturing companies, this limit was lowered to 126 mg/dl. This increased the number of diabetics from 3.5% to **8%** — meaning **4.5% more people** were suddenly labelled as patients even without symptoms. In 1999, WHO approved this standard.

Insulin companies made huge profits and opened new factories.

- **In 2003**, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) declared **100 mg/dl** fasting blood sugar as the limit for diabetes. This turned **27%** of people into diabetics without any real reason.

- Now, according to ADA, even **140 mg/dl** after eating is considered a sign of diabetes. Because of this, nearly **50%** of the world's population has been declared diabetic — many of whom are not actually sick.

Indian pharmaceutical companies are trying to lower it even further to **5.5% HbA1c**, so more people become "patients" and buy more medicines.

Many experts believe that even up to **11% HbA1c** should not be considered diabetes.

**Another example:**

In 2012, a famous pharmaceutical company was fined **3 billion dollars** by the US Supreme Court. Between 2007–2012, their diabetes drug was accused of increasing the death rate from heart attacks by **43%**. The company knew this but deliberately hid it to make profits. During the same period, they earned **300 billion dollars** in profit.

**This is today's "ultra-modern medical system"!!**

**Think about it... Start thinking...** 🙏

HARI

My top 10 Learnings from IIMB SCMC Climate summit 2026

 

Ten things I learned at the IIMB Climate Summit 2026

Two days, one campus, and a world running out of time, May 30, 2026

I spent May 28 and 29 at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore for their Climate Summit — a dense, energising, occasionally alarming two-day gathering of policy-makers, industry leaders, scientists, lawyers, and one actual astronaut. My notebook is now full of circled facts and underlined questions. Here, distilled, are ten things that genuinely shifted my thinking.

LEARNING 01

The world is headed toward energy surplus, not energy scarcity

Manoj Kumar Singh, CEO of Net Zero Think, opened the summit with what sounded like a provocation but turned out to be a thesis backed by data: by 2030, the world will have more energy generation capacity than it knows what to do with — if we invest correctly. The bottleneck is not physics. It is politics, vested interests, and inertia. His phrase "Energy Surplus World by 2030" deserves to be on more people's desks.

LEARNING 02

Solar panels in orbit are no longer a joke

SpaceX-level launch economics have made Low Earth Orbit solar collection a plausible near-term proposition. The conference noted that 15,000 LEO satellites could harvest solar energy in space — uninterrupted by night, clouds, or seasons — and beam it down. The question is no longer whether the physics works. It is whether the political will and the capital will arrive in time.

LEARNING 03

Our buildings are a hidden climate catastrophe

India's Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) remains largely voluntary. Speakers were blunt: compliance is the exception, not the rule. Embedded carbon in construction — from cement to steel — is a massive and systematically under-reported source of emissions. Green certifications like LEED Platinum to Silver benchmarks for new buildings coming up is a real blessing.  The gap is enormous. And we are building at an unprecedented pace.

LEARNING 04

50% of global wars have been fought over energy

This one stopped me cold. Singh's argument: solving energy scarcity is not just a climate intervention, it is a peace intervention. Historically, half of all global armed conflicts have had energy access — oil, gas, coal, water — at their root. An energy-abundant world is, structurally, a more peaceful world. Climate action as conflict prevention: it is an argument that deserves far more airtime in geopolitics discussions.

LEARNING 05

India's sludge problem is actually a goldmine

Only 25% of India's sewage sludge is treated. The rest is dumped — into land, into water, into the future. But the PKC Box / CAMBT session showed that this is also an enormous missed opportunity. The pathway of Sludge → Biogas → Biofertiliser could simultaneously address waste management, energy generation, and agricultural inputs. Toyota is already piloting bio-methane at scale. The technology exists. The will — and the infrastructure — lags.

LEARNING 06

Every death in India costs two trees

At India's mortality scale, cremation using firewood destroys approximately two trees per person who dies. Multiplied across a billion-plus population, this is a significant and rarely discussed driver of deforestation. Bamboo and compressed briquettes are viable alternatives — cheaper, cleaner, and available. Yet cultural habit has kept firewood dominant. This is the kind of problem that policy alone cannot solve.

LEARNING 07

Karnataka's farms are acutely exposed to what is coming

60% of Karnataka's agriculture is rain-fed. Not irrigated. Not buffered. Rain-fed — meaning it is directly, nakedly dependent on monsoon patterns that are growing increasingly erratic. Speakers discussed precision agriculture, automation, and drought-resistant crops as mitigations, but the structural vulnerability is stark. For a state that is simultaneously India's tech capital and a major agricultural producer, this tension is going to define the next decade.

LEARNING 08

India's power math is ambitious but not yet closed

274 GW installed today. 500 GW targeted by 2030. Solar costs ₹3–6 per unit — genuinely cheap. But solar-plus-storage — the dispatchable, 24-hour clean power that actually replaces coal — costs ₹20–30 per unit. That gap is the central unsolved equation of India's energy transition. Until storage economics improve dramatically, we will keep reaching for coal when the sun goes down.

LEARNING 09

Ecocide should be a crime — and the argument is gaining ground

A Supreme Court advocate made a compelling case that the deliberate, large-scale destruction of ecosystems should be codified as Ecocide — a crime against the Earth, prosecutable under international law. The concept has been gaining ground in global legal forums for years. In a country where forests, rivers, and coastlines are routinely sacrificed to "development," placing Ecocide in the same moral category as genocide would be genuinely transformative.

LEARNING 10

AI will cut India's energy intensity — but it will also cut jobs

The summit did not let AI off the hook. Yes, intelligent systems could reduce India's industrial energy intensity by approximately 40% — a significant and achievable gain. But the same automation wave will eliminate millions of "decent jobs," in the summit's own phrasing. The transition cannot be celebrated without also planning for the people it displaces. Energy efficiency and employment justice are not separate problems.

Two days, one notebook, and more questions than answers — which is, I suspect, exactly the point of a good conference. The climate crisis is not waiting for us to be ready. It is asking only whether we are paying attention. I am trying to.

— George, Bengaluru, May 2026

Egyptian mummies