Mani Kanchan (a jewellery park) in Calcutta

Ranchi, June 14: A single diamond goes through the hands of 25 artisans before it reaches the showroom; give us just a hundred acres of land for a jewellery park and we will help generate employment in lakhs.

The plea, made by Jewellers? Forum, was made two months ago on an official website of the state government.

The New Delhi-based association of jewellers received no response, however, to the request for an audience with the chief minister. Neither the industries department nor the chief minister?s secretariat seems to follow the website and respond to requests.

Sanjay Sethi, spokesman for the consortium of jewellers, including such heavyweights as Tribhuvandas Zaveri, P.P. Jewellers and B.C. Sen, claims a letter too was sent to the chief minister. The consortium, with over 300 members, planned to set up an integrated jewellery park at Ranchi on the lines of one that came up in Calcutta a few years ago. The park, said Sethi, would have included manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, designers, bullion dealers, hallmarking centres and exporters, besides training institutes, machinery manufacturers and allied industry ? under one roof.

Proximity to both Calcutta and Orissa, claims Sethi, provides an edge to Ranchi, where the forum believes it would be easy to draw cheap but quality labour and also access the growing market for jewellery.

The park, for security reasons, will have to include residential accommodation, banks, post offices, police stations, schools, dispensaries etc., Sethi pointed out. The forum has been invited already to Goa and talks are going on with the Delhi, Karnataka and Gujarat governments, he claimed.

Expressing shock and surprise at receiving no response from the state government, Sethi suggested, over the telephone, that people in Jharkhand appeared too busy with politics. Industries secretary Arun Kumar Singh, also in Delhi on Wednesday, claimed ignorance about the proposal. All that the forum needs to do is to get in touch with him, he declared. Perhaps he, for a change, could get in touch with the forum?