As factories have started shutting down increasingly, the menace of unemployment is back. West Asia war has been exploited from both sides. On economic front, production has been reduced to minimum as the industries are shutting down. Price hike has been adding to the gloom making life impossible.

Textile is one example where the situation has become extremely precarious. Crisis has been eating up even major producers. Like in Reliance, a prime producer of pellets from crude oil, used in making of specific fiber, like polyester, a byproduct of petrochemical industry from the processing of crude oil and natural gas. The fall in the availability of these basic raw materials has cut down production at a large scale bringing gaps in the continuity.

Energy sector is expected to sustain challenges while going global, but hopes about globalization being long lasting has started going to pieces as steps for deglobalisation have started getting clearer.

It never appeared even in imagination that Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, critical shipping route affected by the conflict, could ever be closed. Only rarely a vessel is seen moving at the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz with Indian flag. We have to preserve …”every drop of oil, gas and coal produced domestically …”, said chief of ONGC, largest producer of crude oil and natural gas. The crisis in the supply of Liquefied Petroleum Gas cylinders is also responsible for shortage of labour who had left their homes as the last option.

Cooking gas supplies face other issues also. The disruption to global shipments caused by the war in the Middle East has strained cooking gas supplies in India. Many people are finding it difficult to access Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders, the most widely used cooking fuel in the country.

India depends heavily on LPG imports, much of which reach the country through the Strait of Hormuz. While Iran is now allowing Indian vessels to pass, the situation is still uncertain and several ships are waiting near the Strait to get through. If we believe what the government says, there is no shortage of LPG, that it is ramping up domestic production and securing more supplies from countries including the US, Russia and Australia. It has also asked people to stop “panic ordering” of gas cylinders.

But migrant workers in big cities, many of whom depend on informal networks to buy cooking gas, are already feeling the brunt. No matter what the government claims, the LPG is facing the worst crisis as the import comprises 88 per cent of the total consumption, about 40 per cent of which is met by the traffic that passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

As the number of migratory labour has come down because of the new crisis, the production has been affected heavily. These workers are mostly from Bihar, though a significant number of them are also from Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. They replace the local workers at a lower rate and create labour surplus. They are part of a floating population that keep circulating according to the availability of jobs based on their seasonality. They are generally unaware of their rights as workmen and accept any wages and working conditions offered to them.

The war has its own effects especially on workers that are unorganised. They come to earn and go back. Attached to their families, usually they are keen to send back money. But loss of employment takes away any rational explanation for them to stay back. The war has its double edged effect. While rising raw material prices have hit production as well as demand, the LPG crisis has forced around 40 per cent of the migrant workforce to head home. In fact the situation is even more tragic compared to COVID-19 as people’s livelihoods are being snatched and they are being forced to migrate, especially when they form the backbone of the city.

Even in their native states, these returning migrants often become victims of local industrial and business units looking for cheap labour. Employing migratory labour liberates such owners from many responsibilities that they face while employing those staying back. Employers have usually no responsibility towards migrant labour, as their stay is usually temporary. The owners do not have to provide for the regeneration of labour power either at the stage of employment or retirement as the character of the labour itself is temporary

Meanwhile, the light at the end of the tunnel, which was seen as a flickering flame of optimism, has gone dim again. The breakdown of highest level talks between the US and Iran, which had been brokered by Pakistan, has once again brought the world face to face with the crisis. The collapse of talks has revived the deadlock, with neither US nor Iran indicating what will happen after April 22 when the ceasefire will expire.

Amidst this uncertainty, US president Donald Trump, following the collapse of the talks, has threatened that the American navy would begin a blockade to stop ships from entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz. This is the first time that the US has sought to exert strategic control over the waterway, which until the beginning of the Gulf War had been responsible for the transportation of 20 percent of the global oil supplies.

The development does not augur well, for India and for the rest of the world. (IPA Service)