India, April 6 -- The disruptions due to the West Asia war has evoked fears of a repeat of pandemic-era disruptions. The government has done well to dispel such fears. There is no reason to believe India will impose a lockdown like during the pandemic. So far, the mitigation measures have been limited to a rationing of gas supplies. Currently, India is better placed than most emerging markets on this count.

However, the war's supply shock seems to have triggered a reverse migration of Indian workers, though not at the pandemic scale. Most anecdotal accounts suggest that this is happening because the working-class migrant cohort cannot source LPG for their kitchens. Hard data is difficult to procure, but intuition suggests that most of th...