Bhopal: This will make you want to drop your pens and pencils and start shovelling in the fields of Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh. A farmer struck lucky and found a diamond worth at least Rs 15 lakh in a field in Panna.If you have 250 bucks to spare, you can try your luck with the shovel, too. Anyone can take an 8mx8m shallow mine on lease for a mere Rs 250 a year from the district administration and look for the sparklers. Suresh Yadav, 40, did just that after he got tired of repeated crop losses."I was not able to improve my family's financial condition through farming, which is now a difficult profession because of erratic weather conditions. Last year, I handed over my small farmland to my son and decided to take a mine on lease in Pati Krishna Kalyanpura to try my luck," Yadav said. He worked like a man possessed. Realising that he still needed to feed the family, he would work as a farm labourer during the day and dig for diamonds in the morning and evening.Monsoon is believed to be the best time to get a diamond. When the skies opened, he dug deep. And last week, struck a diamond — the size of a pebble — which changed his family's fortunes forever.He dug out a 5.82 carat diamond of gem quality. Diamond experts who examined the stone said it could fetch from Rs 15 to Rs 20 lakh. District mining officer Santosh Singh said, "Experts have valued Suresh's diamond as of good quality. It will be auctioned according to government norms."Such rags to riches stories explode out of the mines once every few years. In 2015, Anant Singh Yadav found a diamond that was almost twice as big as Suresh's — over 12.93 carat. The then diamond officer had fixed its price at Rs 2 lakh per carat.When someone finds a diamond here, it's not for keeps. Not right away. After the wild victory dance that the finder presumably does, it is deposited with the 'district diamond officer' in Panna, who auctions it. The state keeps 11.5% of the proceeds; the rest goes to the finder. If no one buys the stone, the finder can buy it for just 11.5% of the expected price, say sources.The shallow mines of Panna are located about 40km from the diamond mines operated by National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC). This poor and backward region has another diamond pocket in Buxwah region of neighbouring Chattarpur district. Besides gem-quality diamonds, off-colour and black diamonds are also found in these shallow mines.

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