Hormuz Is 2,000 Kilometres Away. It Still Set Our Canteen’s Prices.

Our canteen raised the samosa plate by ₹5 in March. I traced that ₹5 back to a narrow strait off the coast of Iran.

The ₹5 question

I have kept a notebook of our school canteen’s prices for two years. In March, the samosa plate went from ₹30 to ₹35, the first increase in over a year. The canteen owner said costs had gone up everywhere. That is the kind of answer you accept without thinking, but I wanted to see if I could follow it back to a cause.

The trail led to the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel between Iran and Oman. About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through it, and so does a large share of India’s LPG. When US and Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, shipping through the strait was disrupted. Brent crude rose from about $72 to well above $100 within weeks.

Following the chain

Here is how I think the ₹5 was built. First, commercial LPG, which the canteen uses, became expensive and scarce, because households were put first in line. Second, oil companies froze petrol and diesel prices for consumers, but transport companies still faced higher costs for everything else, and the vegetable and flour suppliers raised their delivery charges. Third, the rupee fell to a record low, which made imported edible oil more expensive.

None of these alone would have forced a price rise. Together they did. This is how a supply shock works. It does not hit one price. It raises the cost of producing many things at once, and businesses pass part of that on to customers wherever they can.

Why India is so exposed

India imports about 85% of its crude oil, and a large share of it comes from the Gulf. Few big economies depend so heavily on a single route. That is why Indian markets, the rupee and inflation all react so strongly to news from a region most of us have never visited. Oil is not just a fuel. It is an input into food, transport, plastics, fertiliser and electricity.

The canteen will probably keep the new price even if oil falls, because prices tend to go up quickly and come down slowly. That is a small thing, but it explains why a war far away can leave a lasting mark on the cost of living here. Geography decides more of our daily budget than we notice, and sometimes it only takes a samosa to see it.