While West Asia is on fire, regular Indians are paying the price at home.
This week, a dhaba owner in Mumbai paid almost twice the official price for a cooking gas cylinder.
He wasn’t making a choice; he was making a desperate calculation. You have to pay the black market price or close the kitchen.
Right now, thousands of small restaurant owners in India are going through that exact moment.
The conflict in West Asia has caused a serious shortage of LPG across the country, breaking supply chains and driving up prices in unofficial markets.
The price of cylinders on the black market in Mumbai has almost doubled. In Bhopal, restaurants have stopped using gas altogether and switched to induction cooktops just to stay in business. Stock is low in Kolkata and Delhi, and fear is spreading quickly.
The damage to the economy is already spreading. Economists are warning that the CPI numbers for March could rise sharply because rising fuel prices are making food prices go up across the board. For millions of families who are already having a hard time making ends meet, that’s not just a number—it’s the difference between a full plate and an empty one.
The crisis has started a full-blown war between the government and the opposition. Jairam Ramesh, a member of Congress, said that the Modi government is “clearly afraid” of a debate in Parliament and that India’s foreign policy has been “brutally exposed.”” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went even further by calling an emergency meeting with LPG dealers and announcing a protest march in Kolkata on Monday. She directly blamed the Center for “lack of planning.”
So far, the government has not said anything. No emergency funding. No public schedule. No way to get help was announced.
That quiet is turning into a story of its own.
Because the conflict in West Asia doesn’t seem to be getting any better and India gets more than half of its LPG needs from other countries, this shortage may not go away quickly. Next month, we’ll get the first real test of how bad this crisis really is when we get the March inflation data.
India’s kitchens are getting cold right now, but the political heat is only getting hotter.
