Amit Shah asks India to hold the whole lab-grown chain
Speaking in Mumbai on 13 September, the home minister named machines, production, jewellery, brands and showrooms. He put 2025 gems and jewellery exports at Rs 2.44 lakh crore and the workforce at 75 lakh.
By The Diamond Desk
What changed
Shah named the whole chain. India's home minister asked the trade to hold every link of the lab-grown diamond business, from building the machines to opening showrooms abroad. He put India's 2025 exports at Rs 2.44 lakh crore.
What it means
- If you make lab-grown in Surat: the minister's list runs past growing stones to machines and retail brands.
- If you sell growers into India: domestic machine-building is now a stated federal aim, not a trade wish.
- What this is not: a policy. No scheme, budget or date was announced with the appeal.
Key figures
| World's polishingIndia's share, his figure | 90% |
|---|---|
| 2025 exportsRs 2.44 lakh croregems and jewellery, his figure | |
| Jobs claimeddirect and indirect | 75 lakh |
| His volume claimlab-grown against current volume | 50x |
| Links namedmachines, output, jewellery, brands, shops | 5 |
Source: Amit Shah at the 52nd India Gems and Jewellery Awards, Mumbai, 13 September 2026 · every figure below is the speaker's, not Carat Capital's audit
Five links, one owner
Five links in the list. The appeal names 5 links: machines, stones, jewellery, brands and showrooms abroad.
Machines come first. Shah asked the trade to build the growing machines in India rather than import them.
Showrooms come last. The list ends with Indian brands opening shops in cities outside India.
| Link | What India does now | Source of the claim |
|---|---|---|
| Growing machines | not stated | the address |
| Growing the stones | not stated | the address |
| Cutting and polishing | more than 90% of the world's cut and polished diamonds | the address |
| Making the jewellery | not stated | the address |
| Brands and showrooms abroad | not stated | the address |
Source. ANI's report of the address, 13 September 2026.
The 90%. is the only link the speaker attached a figure to, and it covers all cut and polished diamonds, not lab-grown alone.
Not stated. means the address gave no figure for that link, and none has been supplied here.
Nothing here. is a government target or a published statistic.
The figures are the speaker's
Rs 2.44 lakh crore. Shah put India's 2025 gems and jewellery exports at that figure in the same address.
Seventy-five lakh jobs. He said about 75 lakh people take direct and indirect employment from the trade.
Ninety per cent polished. He said India processes more than 90% of the world's cut and polished diamonds.
Fifty times, by volume. He put lab-grown's potential at nearly 50 times the current diamond market by volume.
One state has a policy already
Maharashtra moved in 2025. The state's gems and jewellery policy of 2025 carries provisions for the lab-grown industry.
No federal scheme named. The address of 13 September announced no central scheme, outlay or date for the value chain it described.
What to watch
- Next budgetWhether a central lab-grown scheme follows the appeal with an outlay.
- Monthly GJEPCWhether lab-grown export figures move against the Rs 2.44 lakh crore total.
- Any state policyWhether Gujarat publishes lab-grown provisions to match Maharashtra's.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A central scheme with money attached. An appeal at an awards dinner and a funded policy are different objects, and only the second would change what a manufacturer does next quarter.
What a lab-grown value chain contains
A lab-grown diamond passes through a reactor, a cutting wheel, a setting bench and a shop window. The reactors themselves, whether chemical vapour deposition chambers or high-pressure presses, are capital equipment that has historically been bought from outside India. The minister's appeal treats the reactor as part of the chain rather than an input to it, which is what makes the list longer than the usual cutting-and-polishing account of India's position.
Method
The address was given at the 52nd India Gems and Jewellery Awards in Mumbai on Sunday 13 September 2026, with Shah as chief guest. Age is stated from the event and not from the write-up: the Bureau's slate dated this item 14 September, which is the day Rapaport published, and the address was two days before this edition, not one. The primary text was read through two independent reports of ANI's copy, dailyprabhat.com and diamondworld.net, both fetched directly; aninews.in itself returned 403 to this desk and no address was guessed in its place. Divergence between outside sources, disclosed: diamondworld.net, published 15 September 2026, carries the claim that the lab-grown market could expand to nearly 50 times the size of the current diamond market in volume, and Rapaport's report of 14 September carries the same figure without the word volume; the ANI copy read at dailyprabhat does not carry the figure at all and paraphrases the speaker as saying the market is likely to expand on a large scale. This article prints the figure as volume, attributed to the speaker, and marks it to the second source rather than the first. No exchange rate is asserted anywhere: the export figure is printed in rupees and is not converted. The 90%, the Rs 2.44 lakh crore and the 75 lakh are all the speaker's own claims made in the address, and Carat Capital has not audited any of them against GJEPC or customs data. Archive test, both periods named: a search of the archive for Amit Shah returns zero files, and the paper's nearest prior item, 20 August 2026, covers GJEPC's own $100 billion by 2040 export target rather than any ministerial address. New entity and new document, so NEW.