The best ability of Indian refineries is that they can switch between Gulf crude, Russian Urals, and Venezuelan heavy oil. They were built with deep conversion capacity, with units that crack the heavy, sulphur-laden bottom of the barrel into clean diesel and petrol.
Why is India delaying or taking so much time to make this deal possible? There is no single answer to that, but if we put the pieces together, India’s go-slow approach starts to make sense and more like a strategy. It rests on five calculations.
When major global agricultural supply centres across Eastern Europe and the Middle East faced severe disruption, India confronted potential supply chain vulnerabilities reminiscent of earlier decades. Disruptions to fertiliser imports could have reduced domestic crop yields, driven up food inflation, and strained national economic stability. Instead, strategic supply management mitigated these risks through deliberate policy execution:
Economists have a name for what happens when a central bank’s independence quietly bends under the weight of government borrowing needs: fiscal dominance. It’s the slow drift toward that condition, not some Hollywood-style default, that should worry anyone watching from outside America’s borders.
India’s ambitious River Linking Project under the NWDA aims to interconnect 30 inter-basin river links, comprising 14 Himalayan and 16 Peninsular components.
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