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India’s vulnerability was quick to show. Within two weeks of the US and Israel attacking Iran on February 28, Indians were queuing for cooking gas.

A woman, probably in her mid-forties, came close to breaking down in front of a reporter. “We have not cooked at home for 5-6 days now,” she said. “We have been running around for a week looking for gas. Cylinders are now selling for Rs 7,000. How are we supposed to feed our children? Hum duty karein ya gas ki line mein lagey (Should we work or stand in queues for LPG)?”

She wasn’t the only one ambushed by the energy shortage. In the initial weeks of the war, as eateries slashed menus, switched to coal or firewood, or even contemplated closure, their suppliers, food delivery agents and employees wondered what lay in store. Farmers wondered if they would get enough urea. Industrial units running on LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) or CNG (compressed natural gas) – or those using industrial inputs made from petroleum – worried about shortages as well.

By the end of the first month itself, some of these fears had metastasised into reality. Units in industrial clusters like Gujarat’s Morbi began closing. In Surat, five years after COVID-19, migrant workers queued once more outside train stations. “We have not eaten for the last four days,” one textile worker said. Across India, prices of coal and firewood began climbing, taking the country into higher pollution and accelerated tree loss, even deforestation.

The worst, however, was yet to come. The crises listed above had resulted from delayed oil shipments from the Gulf. Three months into the war, as the last of the pre-loaded cargoes reached India, the larger costs of slashed oil/gas production – as much as 40% of the refining capacity in the Gulf had been damaged – began to make themselves felt. 

Poorer families were spending as much as a third of their earnings on LPG or falling back on firewood. Between scarcer inputs like petroleum-based industrial feedstock and a mounting struggle to get diesel for trucks,........

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