Sifting through the dust for a golden payout
NEWDELHI: Hours after the jewellery showrooms and gold workshops down shutters in Delhi’s Karol Bagh and Chandni Chowk, a group of men get to work, sweeping the floors outside the shops or stealthily sliding down manholes into the sewer lines.
These are Delhi’s gold hunters. Over the next few hours, they will go about sifting many kilos of dust and dirt to filter out gold dust and tiny slivers of the precious metal.
The gold they find has never made any of them rich, but by late afternoon, each of them would be hoping to earn ₹200 to ₹2,000, depending on their luck, skill and experience, the quality of metal they find — and the price the buyers are willing to shell out, which would be 10% to as much as 40% below the market price.
“The gold dust gets mixed with the mud outside the workshops. It is quite similar to a barber’s shop. When the barber walks out of the saloon, he is bound to carry some hair on his body. We earn our living from the gold that was otherwise going to be wasted,” said Mohammad Salil, one of around 200 men engaged in the occupation.
Deepak Singh, who introduced himself as the contractor/caretaker for these workers, said the 200 men working at the Dev Nagar slum end up collecting a total of 40 to 60 grams of gold worth ₹1-1.5 lakh every day. Each man takes home ₹300-1,000 every day, said Singh, who is in his forties. “Sometimes, they get luckier, and on occasions, they go back with just ₹100 in their pockets,” he said.
They often come under police scrutiny when a jewellery shop is robbed. “We are the usual suspects, but never has any of us been arrested for any theft. We wouldn’t kill the goose and lose all our golden eggs,” said Singh.