As war in the Middle East disrupts energy flows, millions of Indian households are left scrambling for gas
As Indian publication Khabar Lahariya reports, the ongoing conflict between the United States, Iran and Israel – specifically the closure of the Strait of Hormuz – has been wreaking havoc on the streets of India. A fall in imports has led to gas shortages, panic buying and, importantly, a run on gas cylinders – a source of portable energy which provides heating and cooking for millions.
[This isn’t the first time Translator has touched on this subject: Issue #1 contained a Street Talk from N’Djamena in Chad, where the search for a “bouteil” of gas constituted a daily grind for many of the city’s residents].
The consequences of all this can be fatal. Khabar Lahariya takes the case reported in the Indian Express of a seventy-year-old man in Uttar Pradesh, fabric worker Mukhtiyar Ahmed, who died complaining of chest pains after being forced to wait in line for an extended period. Elsewhere, in Punjab, sixty-six-year-old Bhushan Kumar arrived to pick up a gas cylinder early one morning, spent two hours in a queue, and collapsed.
The issue is not just supply shortages of gas itself, but the public response, and how others have been able to capitalise on the situation. Fear around being caught short has meant that people are booking gas cylinders ahead earlier in an attempt to get ahead, exacerbating the sense of shortage. Companies have taken to social media to try and calm the situation.
In some places, a black market has emerged, with LPG gas cylinders being sold at double or triple the normal price, cylinders being stockpiled and racketeers getting in on the action. In Mundka, West Delhi, police confiscated over six hundred cylinders being stored illegally. In the state of Madhya Pradesh Amar Ujala, another Hindi-language daily, reported on the formation of a special task force to uncover illegal storage. According to News 18, by mid-March, nearly five thousand raids had taken place in Uttar Pradesh.
It’s a salutary reminder that while many around the world may be tracking the oil price, interest rates or the share market, more immediate and tangible consequences are being felt throughout the world in terms of the ability to cook and heat themselves – and have been for weeks, without a clear end in sight.
The original article by Suchitra Hindi, ‘LPG Gas Cylinder Shortage: दिल्ली, यूपी और एमपी में एलपीजी गैस सिलेंडर की कालाबजारी शुरू और भारी मात्रा में गैस सिलेंडर जब्त’ was published in Hindi by Khabar Lahariya on March 17, 2026.
It is available here.
Khabar Lahariya is an independent, women-led Indian digital news organisation founded in 2002, originally as a print newspaper in Uttar Pradesh, offering fearless feminist journalism.
Summary by TMH
