Opinion | Three Shields Against The Global Storm: How PM Modi Strengthened India's Energy, Economy And Defence |
Opinion | Three Shields Against The Global Storm: How PM Modi Secured India's Energy, Economy And Defence
Updated: May 22, 2026 14:29 pm IST Published On May 22, 2026 14:29 pm IST Last Updated On May 22, 2026 14:29 pm IST
Published On May 22, 2026 14:29 pm IST
Last Updated On May 22, 2026 14:29 pm IST
The headlines last week read like dispatches from a war room. Oil tankers rerouting around the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude climbing by the hour. Fertiliser and diesel prices twitching in sympathy across continents. The war in Europe digging in for another summer with no armistice in sight. Into the middle of this frightened, churning world walked an Indian Prime Minister, boarding a flight to Abu Dhabi with the calm of a man who knew exactly what he had gone to fetch. Six days later, after Abu Dhabi, The Hague, Gothenburg, Oslo and Rome, PM Modi flew home. He brought back no souvenirs. He brought back three shields, raised around a billion and a half people. Energy. Economy. Defence. The three things no nation can improvise once the world is already ablaze.
The storm, and the strategy
Understand first what kind of crisis this is. Not a single shock but a convergence of them. A war in West Asia threatening the arteries of global oil. A war in Europe that has scrambled the continent's energy and its grain, sending frightened capital racing back to whatever it imagines safe. In such a moment, lesser governments freeze, issue statements and wait for the weather to change. PM Modi did the opposite. He read the map of India's vulnerabilities, picked five countries that each held a piece of the answer, and went to collect.
The First Shield: Energy
Roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and a large share of India's crude comes from precisely that neighbourhood.........