Chains of gold

On a weeknight in a middle-class Mumbai suburb, young couples and middle-aged women browse at the local branch of Tanishq, India’s largest national jewellery chain. A woman is buying bangles with her winnings from an informal lottery. A couple plan to spend 250,000 rupees ($4,700) a year on baubles that will act as a savings fund for their five-year-old daughter. Until recently, such customers would instead have gone to a small-scale “family jeweller”.

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