India, April 3 -- Kerala will vote to elect a new government on April 9. Politics in what is an extremely politicized state is competing with the intense heat in the weather. But the state's body politic is also dealing with an intense 'western disturbance': the war in West Asia and its impact on millions of Malayalis who are directly or indirectly invested in the region. Here are three charts which explain the argument in detail.

"Several Indians working in the Gulf said they were more worried about the risk to job security than personal safety", A Financial Times story published on March 24 said. If not for the raging war in West Asia, newsrooms would have been reporting on the Malayali diaspora flying home to vote in their elections....