New Delhi: India’s diplomatic silence on mediating the West Asia conflict, the resilience of its 10-million-strong Gulf diaspora, and cascading disruptions—from aviation to the ceramics industry—have drawn sustained attention in the international media this week.
Menaka Doshi of Bloomberg flagged New Delhi’s studied silence as a strategic puzzle at a moment when Pakistan is pushing to mediate the US-Israel war with Iran. “It’s fine if India wanted to sit this one out but then why visit Israel hours before the war broke,” she questioned in a newsletter.
It described the “delicate balancing act” India faces across its multiple West Asia partnerships, noting that “its growing closeness to the US and Israel in recent years has required some distancing from Iran, and that carries costs”.
Chetna Kumar, Bloomberg’s South Asia Geoeconomics Analyst, was quoted as saying that New Delhi’s inaction was a structural failure. “What is becoming clear is that India’s rising international profile has not translated into commensurate influence or an ability to shape key moments where it is a significant stakeholder—even as it aspires to emerge as an independent pole in global affairs,” Kumar said.
Noting that India’s manufacturing activity in March slumped to its lowest in nearly four-and-a-half years, Doshi added, “Maybe that will allow (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi time to focus on rescuing the local economy.”
Bloomberg’s aviation and infrastructure correspondent Mihir Mishra wrote in another report about an Indian sailor who was stranded in a commercial vessel in the Persian Gulf for ten days. “Food was not a problem—we had enough provisions—but since our vessel was anchored and its engines were switched off, fresh water could not be generated,” the sailor told Mishra.
The vessel was in a war zone, the sailor said, with “missiles flying overhead”. The crew had no illusions about their exposure. “Our vessel was anchored away from the port so as to minimise the probability of being hit by a missile. But deep down, we all knew that it was just a matter of luck—good or bad,” he said.
Navigation required extraordinary precaution. “The ship’s transponder and GPS were switched off because vessels in the region have, since the outbreak of war, faced false satellite-navigation signals that distort position data,” the sailor said.
Meticulous planning and continuous communication with Indian authorities ultimately got them home. “It helped that Indian authorities were constantly in touch with us,” he said.
Michael Stott, Andres Schipani and Simeon Kerr reported for the Financial Times that while wealthy Westerners had paid exorbitant sums or chartered jets to flee the Gulf conflict, India’s roughly 10-million-strong diaspora was making a different calculation. The vast majority are staying put, their Gulf jobs being “far more lucrative” than what they left behind, the report said. Several Indians told FT they were more worried about job security than personal safety.
Tens of thousands of Indians still work on construction sites in the blazing heat, but the report noted that the diaspora has grown considerably more diverse over recent decades. It spans middle-class professionals and wealthy business figures—some of whom were now running informal campaigns to encourage the community to hold its ground.
One such figure was Rizwan Sajan, a Mumbai-born billionaire who owns a construction and property empire in Dubai, and has offered accommodation to those displaced by the conflict. “I don’t think any other place in the world can give you what Dubai has given. We just have to be calm, composed and strong,” he was quoted as saying.
The FT report also traced the political investment behind these ties. Prime Minister Modi has visited the UAE seven times since taking office in 2014, signing an investment treaty and a trade deal. New Delhi aims to double bilateral trade to $200 billion a year by 2032, it noted.
Writing in The New York Times, Niraj Chokshi, Pragati K.B. and Aaron Krolik reported that the Strait of Hormuz blockade has sent aviation fares climbing as fuel costs spike.
According to the Official Aviation Guide (OAG), 44 airlines that had scheduled flights to south Asia in the last week of February have cancelled all services through April. Air India was the hardest hit: 16 of its 36 long-haul flights connecting the Middle East to India were cancelled Monday.
BBC’s Koh Ewe and Flora Drury reported that everyday life across Asia was being upended by the fuel crisis. With only a handful of ships passing through the Strait each day, “oil prices have soared and stock markets have wobbled as the world waits to see when Iran will allow the key waterway—through which about 20 percent of all oil passes—to reopen”.
The consequences for India were acute. Roughly 60 percent of India’s LPG is imported, and nearly 90 percent of those supplies transit the Strait of Hormuz. The ceramics industry, which employs 400,000 people, has been left in limbo, it said.
In Mumbai, as many as a fifth of all hotels and restaurants were fully or partially shut in the first weeks of March; and items that take longer to cook have disappeared from menus. Long queues have formed nationwide as people rush to secure gas cylinders, even as the government attempts to calm fears of a shortage, it said.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
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