4 min readApr 11, 2026 06:45 AM IST First published on: Apr 11, 2026 at 06:45 AM ISTThe ongoing war in West Asia has resulted in an LPG crisis in India. The disruption in supplies has led to higher prices, panic buying, long queues and black-marketing. Reports have also indicated a reduction in output of small industries reliant on LPG, and of migrant workers in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Surat starting to return to their villages, reminiscent of the Covid lockdown. Sensibly, the government has prioritised domestic supply over industrial (and restaurant) use and has sought alternative imports.What are the implications of this supply reduction on access to and preparation of a diet that meets India’s nutritional guidelines? There are both direct and indirect effects. The rising cost of cooking fuel immediately raises the costs of preparing meals. This is not insignificant; according to the nationally representative Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) data from 2023-24, fuel and light constitute 6.1 per cent and 5.6 per cent of total monthly per capita expenditure in rural and urban areas respectively, close to the amount spent on medical expenses or education.AdvertisementThere are also several knock-on effects. India is heavily dependent on imports for both finished fertilisers and raw materials. The disruption to fertiliser supply chains — combined with rising costs of mechanisation and transportation — is likely to increase the costs of cultivation substantially, leading to the risk of food inflation.These could erode access to a healthy diet. Even prior to this crisis, healthy diets were unaffordable for many. We use the HCES 2023-24 to estimate the Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD), which is the minimum daily rupee amount one would need to spend to meet the ICMR’s food-based dietary guidelines. We estimate the national average CoHD for a non-vegetarian diet at Rs 73.1 per person per day in 2023-24, suggesting that between 25 to 49 per cent of the population could not afford the raw cost of the foods that would make up a healthy diet, depending on which threshold one used.However, preparing a meal includes other costs beyond the raw food costs, such as the cost of spices and, more importantly, of fuel. When these costs are accounted for, the CoHD increases by about Rs 9.5, of which Rs 6.5 comes from the cost of the fuel used to prepare the meal. This means that the proportion of the population who cannot afford a healthy diet increases to 32-62 per cent, depending on the affordability threshold used. With this war, the contribution of cooking fuel costs to the overall cost of meal preparation is likely to rise substantially; along with the possible rise in food prices, this will further reduce the affordability of a healthy diet.AdvertisementWhat should be the way forward? Our research highlights the importance of expanding the focus to include dietary diversity as well as other accompanying factors, such as access to and costs of cooking fuel, the reach and coverage of social safety nets, and the division of labour within the home – all of which come together to determine what people ultimately eat. In the immediate term, expanding the scope of social safety net programmes to subsidise the cost of nutritious foods like pulses, vegetables, eggs and flesh foods, and nuts and seeds would help buffer rising food prices for these perishable and semi-perishable items, and raise consumption to the levels recommended by the ICMR. Continued support through schemes like the PMUY is critical, as is the inclusion of migrant populations within its ambit, even if only temporarily. In the longer term, the availability of nutritious foods could be enhanced through agriculture policies.you may likeThe current situation of increasing fuel costs and the prospect of a global food price surge underscores the relevance of a food systems approach to food policy. In a country with a high and stubborn level of malnutrition, such shocks could have immediate effects on people’s health and nutrition outcomes. We must not lose sight of the need for nutrition security if we are to weather this storm.Sinha is at Centre for the Study of the Indian Economy, Azim Premji University and Raghunathan is an independent researcher. Views are personal