Indian Jewelry » Gem Jewellery Traders India

Besides the Orissa Mining Corporation, the gemstones business in Orissa consists of a network of gems traders which encourages prospecting, test-trenching and full scale mining, and purchases and distributes the gemstones found by the villagers who do the mining. Since the agents offer the best price, everyone is happy with the system except the government. Villagers, who at one time might have found it difficult to buy meals, now ride around on motorcycles!
Most gemstone trading is done on the local village market day or Haft, along with chickens, livestock, and vegetables. There are usually numerous buyers operating for different agents at any Haft and they bid against each other to buy the goods available.
The Orissa gemstones industry has developed quickly from the first strikes in the early eighties, when gemstones were found as a by-product of construction and other jobs. In the Bhawanipatna area, workers levelling ground for a railroad unearthed fine hessonite garnets. In other areas, gemstones were thrown up by farmers' ploughs.

Difficult Terrain:
In the meantime, OMC controls the known gemstone deposits, and independent miners mostly dig around the edges, looking for gemstones, which they often find. The variety of gemstones found to date is surprisingly rich.
Rhodolite Garnet is found at Siali Nattamunda, fifty-three kilometres from Bolangir, the nearest town, on a bad road and then a dirt track. The dirt track fords a stream which is often dangerous to cross when overflowing in the monsoon season.

Gamet Belt:
The Siali Garnet Belt is estimated to be a strip seven kilometres long and 2.5 kilometres wide, running in a southwest-northwest direction. The existing OMC mine is a pit surrounded by barbed wires but there are many, other pits for illegal mining stretching the length of the identified belt. The surface indicator is quartz and the independent miners are skilled in knowing where to dig.
Some pits are being worked. Siali Rhodolites have an attractive violet color. The host rock for garnet is a pegmatite colluvium with a half metre of granite as surface cover. The mining pits average three metres, although some go down as deep as five metres. The main problem is water seepage, which usually begins at three metres as there is no pumping equipment available. The largest mining pit has now become a pond!

Fine Blue Aquamarine:
Aquamarine is found at Badmal, four hours journey from Sambalpur, in a gem - bearing strip five kilometres wide and twelve kilometres long running in a north-south direction. The mother rock is again a pegmatite but it is of a different composition than Siali. The surface minerals are colorless, smoky and tinted quartz.
Complex pegmatite is usually more gem-bearing than the simple variety and a sure indicator of this is tinted quartz on the surface. Here it is tinted from \ buff to pink.

The aquamarine at Badmal ranges from blue to greenish blue, with the greenish blue turning a very good color after heat treatment. Badmal is difficult to mine as there is not enough water for the washing of the gravel. Ground water is found at a depth of fifty metres, which is too deep for the independent miners, so mining takes place only during monsoon season from July to October.
There are plans to auction mining rights for one square kilometre blocks in Badmal to three private companies but the sporadic nature of the deposits might make organized mining frustrating. There are pockets of large beryl crystals or beryl in quartz or pegmatite colluvium interspersed with unproductive patches.

Paika Dekhuliguda, the chrysoberyl mine, is near Jhillingdhar. The road between them is lined with mining pits, some of which contain tiny hessonite garnets with good color. Paika Dekhuliguda and nearby Surjapalli have produced good quality chrysoberyl, cat's-eye and some alexandrite. lolite Galore:
This area also has a lot of iolite mines operated by independent miners. Most of the mines are pits which often get flooded.
The gems roughs mined in this area are mainly traded in Kantabhanji, a small village. which is now very prosperous. Traders in this village also deal in diamonds which are panned along with other gemstones from the Mahanadi river. There are reports of four diamonds that have been sold each exceeding 100 carats and a 58 carat blue diamond. Meanwhile, Ashton of Australia and De Beers of South Africa have also shown interest in Orissa's diamonds.

River-borne Gems:
The gemstones found in the river have been washed in by its tributaries, some of which begin in the neighbouring State of Madhya Pradesh, also known for gemstones. The alluvial deposits found in the gem districts of Orissa are the legacy of some rivers which have since dried up.