By
April 30, 2026
In India, to improve their families’ chances of eating regularly, millions of low-paid workers may soon leave the cities where they had found work. They are moving back to their villages where they hope they can eat. Some 20,000 seafarers stuck on over 1,000 ships in the Persian Gulf west of the Strait of Hormuz are wondering if they will ever leave.
The war of aggression the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran caused this disruption. This article explains how.
Wars are fought between armed groups, called variously soldiers, troops, sailors or pilots. In the conflict zones, civilians often become “collateral” damage, along with the roads, bridges, hospitals and schools they use.
In this age of globalization, workers outside the conflict zones are also heavily impacted. In a similar way, due to the spike in energy costs and disruption of the supply chain serving globalized production, disruptions threaten the world’s economy with a vast depression.
Indian workers leaving and laid off
“I’ve not had proper food for days” is the lament of millions of low-paid, migrant Indian workers leaving Delhi. They were unable to pay sharply rising food prices and the surging cost of liquified petroleum gas (LPG), which is used for cooking. Going home is now their only option. (The Guardian, April 9)
Some 2 million Indian workers returned to India from Persian Gulf emirates since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, 2026.
The government has a program designed to provide small LPG cylinders to low- income families, if their residences have been registered. But most of the millions of migrants who have moved to Delhi since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic have not registered. On the private market, the cost of an LPG tank is now eight times what it was before the U.S. launched the war against Iran.
Millions of Indian citizens have been working in the Gulf emirates at all different levels. This includes skilled workers, engineers, laborers and domestic servants, as well as some entrepreneurs. The Indian government has no statistics on these Indians working in other countries, but it does know that their remittances — the money they send home to India — amount to $50 billion a year.
Over two million of these expat Indian workers returned home to India from late February, when the war started, to mid-April this year. (Deutsche Welle, April 24)
20,000 seafarers stuck in Gulf
Before Iran took control of the Strait of Hormuz soon after the U.S.-Israeli sneak attack opened this chapter of the war, about 125 ships passed through it each day. Eighty ships passed through it the week of April 13-19. Dozens of ships have come under attack since the war started, and a United Nations report says at least 16 seafarers were killed.
Secretary General Arsenio Dominguez of the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency, told the South China Morning Post that the trapped ships, many of them threatened by the U.S. blockade of Iran, were running short of food, water and fuel. The seafarers also faced challenges to their mental health. Dominguez said the seafarers were not parties to the conflict and should be released. (April 25)
