symbolic mass participation<\/a> to rally the country around a national cause. <\/p>\nThis time, the collective mission is economic survival: save dollars. Unsurprisingly, the message sent a wave of panic across India’s financial markets.<\/p>\n
“My view is we should prepare for paranoia before the event,” Uday Kotak, a veteran Indian banker, told a gathering of industry leaders this week, adding, “We must prepare for the worst.”<\/p>\n
“We have not seen the impact in the last two months of the Middle East war in terms of energy price transmission\u2026 It’s coming and its coming big and consumers have not felt the pressure at all,” Kotak said. <\/p>\n
India’s vulnerability is straightforward. <\/p>\n
The country imports roughly 90% of its crude oil and half its gas needs. With the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow Gulf chokepoint through which much of the world’s oil flows – shut for more than two months amid the war, India’s import bill has ballooned by billions of dollars. <\/p>\n
Air fares have surged as airlines pass on fuel costs. Overseas holidays are becoming more expensive. Gold imports, a chronic drain on foreign exchange, have become a fresh target, with the government sharply raising import duties on gold and silver to 15%.<\/p>\n
“What was initially seen as a temporary shock could now turn into a prolonged crisis. If that happens, India could be among the worst-affected economies,” says Rajeswari Sengupta, an associate professor of economics at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the war in Iran drags into its third month with no clear end in sight, Prime Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-584689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}