Deserted shops meet one’s eyes at Meerut’s historic Sarafa bazar, the large colonial-era bullion market famous for its gold, silver and diamond trading, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s austere call to curb gold purchase for a year. A dispirited Meerut Bullion and Jewellers Association has sought an appointment with the PM, its General Secretary Vijayanand Agarwal told businessline, saying the industry was desperately seeking relief measures to tide over this latest upheaval. The industry has been facing a slowdown for the last three years, he said.
annual turnover
The Meerut bullion market’s annual turnover is nearly ₹20,000 crore — a business generated through 200 wholesale stores that work with a network of about 30,000 goldsmiths and other contributors, mostly from West Bengal.
“We would like to offer a suggestion to the Prime Minister to incentivise old jewelry recycling to bring to market idle gold lying with the banks,” he said, describing how the dealers were doing only 20-30 per cent of their regular business now. Offloading gold from the RBI reserve is another idea the association has suggested.
The bullion dealers are in a bind, caught between survival mode and the larger national interest of austerity and “economic patriotism”. At BR Jewelers, which had no customers, owner Ankit Jain, wondered how the traders would sustain staff salary and provide business to the goldsmiths. “Many of them live on borrowed money and bank loans,” said Jain.
“We just come in the morning and go back home in the evening, wondering what next is in store for us,” said another bullion trader in the bazaar. He also wondered why no restrictions had been imposed on gold bonds and gold exchange traded fund trading, which allows investors to buy and sell the yellow metal in electronic, digital form on stock exchanges. Gold and silver are streedhan, he asserted, and an important part of Indian weddings.
“The gold grey market is already active” was the buzz in Saraf Bazaar, where Vijayanand, Ankit and at least three other traders voiced fears of a rise in precious metal smuggling. A few showrooms have begun offering a discount of ₹5,000 to ₹7,000 per 10 grams to attract some business. Gold prices in India are about ₹16,158 per gram for 24-karat and₹ 14,806 per gram for 22-karat, and currently volatile.
Nazrul, a goldsmith who works out of a tiny room on the third floor of a dilapidated building tucked inside the narrow Neel Gali in Agarwal Market, said that stores are cutting down on workers and business has been reduced to working on just 100 gms of gold per day — a steep slide from at least 500 gms of work they would do even in slowdown days. “Now, we barely manage to get ₹500 to ₹700 per day for our sweat,” he said.
Published on May 14, 2026