Ted Frater wrote:

If as you describe, the jewellery trade in India and the craftsmen
working in it are devided into those who design and those who make.
the latter being poorly paid.
It cannot be that simple.
Because some one somewhere has to find the money to pay for the raw
materials and jewels before the said poorly paid worker can start.
Does the designer ask for say half the cost up front?
Or does he supply the craftsman with the gold/silver and stones?
someone has to fund the exercise.
Wether in India or here.

The people who own jewellery businesses in India are, in reality,
bullion dealers rather then jewellers.

Because of a tax levied on gold entering India the bullion business
there can be a very murky business indeed.

The cost of turning gold into jewellery in India is trivial compared to
the cost of the raw materials

The designers I've met are all related to the chap who runs the bullion
business, so they're 'family'. Nepotism is respectable in India and
jewellery design is not terribly difficult if what people want is 'more
of the same but slightly different engraving please'.

Because the political system has always been a touch unstable people
want portable wealth and jewellery is one way of having that without
suspicion that you've got a sack of gold bars under the bed.

Just about every branch of every bank in India has a safe deposit vault
under it where the family's gold is stashed.

The craftsmen are almost incidental in all this. They're just people
turning the family's wealth into something that can be displayed without
vulgarity.

It's all really a lot more complicated than that, and there are lots of
social pressures involved.

Layered on top of that there are the factories making jewellery for
export who don't appear to be factories at all but seem to use 'home
workers' as their labour source. They're all locked into exclusive
contracts with overseas companies and won't sell domestically.

Jewellery is big business in India, but there aren't any big
manufacturers, the shopkeepers make their own stuff in their own
workshops, but very little of it is what you'd call 'exciting'.


--
William Black

"Any number under six"

The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.