India, March 18 -- Each day for the past week, Ashwini Koli, 25, has stood in a 4 am queue in Turbhe MIDC, watching the sun rise over industrial chimneys. By noon, she returns to her cramped tenement with the same result: an empty hand and a cold stove.

"For three days, the gas hasn't been lit in our home," said Koli, a migrant from Karnataka. "There is no space for a wood stove-the house will catch fire. We are caught between a factory cutting our shifts and a kitchen that has ceased to function."

Koli is part of a massive industrial ecosystem staring at a dual crisis of employment and starvation. What began as a distant geopolitical tremor in West Asia has cascaded into a systemic crisis across the Navi Mumbai-Panvel-Uran corridor. Wh...