My visit to Vizhinjam port, Aug '26

MSC Irina - world's largest container ship

Surat Diamond Processing centre - world's largest office

Vizhinjam international airport

Kochi Solar airport - worlds first

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.