In remote Indian villages, malnourished infants suffer because of the Iran War |
Over the past month, while my family and friends in Israel have been enduring endless missiles, sirens, and long hours in safe rooms, I have been far from home. I have been in Mokhada, a remote tribal region about four hours north of Mumbai, India, where I work with Gabriel Project Mumbai, an organization that provides nutrition, education, livelihood and healthcare programs for communities living in extreme poverty. I was supposed to fly home on March 1, but the war with Iran disrupted flights and left me stranded here.
During this difficult time, I have worried constantly about my family living under attack. Yet while I was physically far from the rockets, I began to realize that I was not far from the war at all. To my surprise and dismay, I discovered that this conflict is affecting people who are so far removed from Iran, Israel, and American politics that one would think they would be insulated from its consequences.
I think about children like three-year-old Subash, from the Sartuli village who was born full-term weighing only 1.1 kilograms. His life has been one health struggle after another, and he is part of Gabriel Project Mumbai’s malnutrition intervention program. His supply of nutritious food is now at risk because of the war with Iran.
War is often understood through the images that dominate the news – missiles, soldiers, destroyed buildings, and speeches by politicians. Yet the true reach of war extends far beyond the battlefield. Conflicts thousands of miles away can quietly disrupt the lives of the most vulnerable people in the world – people who have no connection to the conflict itself. The current war involving Iran is one such example. While the fighting is taking place in the Middle East, its ripple effects are being felt in remote tribal villages in India, where children struggling with severe malnutrition are now facing dangers from a war they know nothing about.
The role of gas in India
India is one of the world’s largest importers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a fuel used widely for cooking, transportation, and industry. Nearly 80% of India’s LPG supply comes from the Middle East, transported by tankers that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most critical energy shipping routes in the world. During the current conflict, this route has been threatened, disrupting shipments and creating shortages.
More than 75% of India’s population lives outside major urban centers, and rural areas are typically the last to receive limited supplies of fuel and essential goods. In tribal regions, where infrastructure is weak and transportation is unreliable, shortages happen quickly and relief arrives slowly. For families already living on the edge of survival, even a small disruption can become life-threatening.
How Gabriel Project Mumbai depends on gas
For the past fourteen years, Gabriel Project Mumbai has worked in remote tribal areas to combat severe acute malnutrition among infants and young children. These communities are home to Adivasi populations, or indigenous tribal groups who have endured generations of poverty, marginalization, and limited access to healthcare, education, and proper nutrition.
Government doctors regularly identify children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition, and without intervention many of these children face permanent developmental damage or even death.
To address this crisis, we provide daily, carefully balanced nutritious meals to children diagnosed with severe malnutrition. These meals are rich in protein, fats, and essential micronutrients, helping children regain strength, gain weight, and return to healthy growth. We built an industrial kitchen in the villages not only to cook the food, but also to provide dignified employment for local women who prepare and deliver the meals to children’s homes every day. Over the years, the results have been remarkable. Children who once faced hospitalization, or worse, have recovered, and families have gained hope that their children can survive and thrive.
But this entire system depends on one simple resource: LPG gas.
When the gas runs out
Our kitchen, which produces hundreds of meals each day, runs on LPG cylinders. Without gas, the food cannot be cooked safely, hygienically, or in the quantities required.
Last week, when our staff went to refill the cylinders, they were told there was no gas available. They tried neighboring districts and heard the same answer. Supplies were still reaching large cities like Mumbai, but rural areas had already begun to feel the shortage.
The global conflict had reached the villages — not through bombs or soldiers, but through an empty gas cylinder.
When the kitchen cannot operate, the children who depend on those meals do not simply miss a meal. They risk slipping back into severe malnutrition. For a child already weakened by hunger, even a few days without proper nutrition can undo months of progress. With no gas available, our team was forced to abandon the modern kitchen and move the cooking outdoors to brick, wood-fired stoves like those traditionally used in village homes.
For years, development professionals and NGOs around the world have encouraged families living in extreme poverty to stop cooking with wood fires because the smoke causes serious respiratory illness, especially in women and children. Wood fires also contribute to deforestation and force families to spend hours collecting fuel. LPG and solar stoves were meant to be the safer, cleaner alternative.
Now, because of a war thousands of kilometers away, the clock has been turned back.
Women who once worked in a clean, efficient, well-ventilated kitchen are now cooking over open flames. Meals take longer to prepare, smoke fills the air, and the amount of food that can be produced is limited. Every day becomes a struggle to provide the care these children need to survive. No one knows how long this can continue.
The war reaches farther than we imagine
Modern wars do not stay within borders. They travel through supply chains, fuel routes, and fragile economic systems. They reach places no one expects.
The shortage of LPG does not only affect one kitchen in one village. It affects transportation, healthcare delivery, agriculture, and daily life across India and much of Asia. When fuel becomes scarce, ambulances cannot travel, food prices rise, factories slow down, and rural communities sink deeper into hardship.
For the malnourished children in remote tribal villages, the consequences are immediate. Their survival depends on a chain that stretches from a small rural kitchen all the way to a narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf.
When that chain breaks, the weakest suffer first.
What is clear is this: the cost of war is never paid only by those who fight it.
Sometimes it is paid by a child like Subash, in a distant village, waiting for a meal that may or may not arrive.