The US-Israel-Iran War And Ways To Solve India’s Energy Crisis

In homes across India, the morning routine now carries a familiar tension. A mother in a small town checks the kitchen cylinder and wonders how many more days it will last. A factory worker calculates whether the increased bus fare will eat into his children’s school fees. A farmer in the fields turns on the irrigation pump and feels the weight of the latest electricity bill. These everyday moments are no longer just personal struggles. They are the direct result of something happening thousands of kilometres away.

That something is the ongoing US-Israel-Iran war. Since late February 2026, the conflict has turned the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow throat through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and one-fifth of its liquefied natural gas flows — into a dangerous choke-point. Tankers have slowed to a trickle. Oil prices have shot past $100 a barrel. Global supply chains are trembling. Yet the real crisis is not the sudden shortage of barrels. The real crisis is the system we built long before this war — a system that treats energy like an endless slave we can command, and then panics when that slave is threatened.

This is where the French philosopher Ivan Illich enters the conversation, not as a distant thinker but as a voice that feels eerily prophetic in 2026. In his 1974 essay Energy and Equity, Illich warned that calling something an “energy crisis” is often a polite way of hiding a deeper truth. He wrote: “It has recently become fashionable to insist on an impending energy crisis. This euphemistic term conceals a contradiction and consecrates an illusion. It masks the contradiction implicit in the joint pursuit of equity and industrial growth… high quanta of energy degrade social relations just as inevitably as they destroy the physical milieu.”

Illich was not against energy itself. He was against the blind worship of ever-higher quantities of it. He argued that below a certain threshold, energy tools serve human freedom. Above that threshold, they begin to rule us. Motors improve life only up to a point. After that point, they create dependence, inequality, and a loss of control. The war in the Gulf is not causing this crisis — it is merely exposing a crisis that was already baked into our high-energy lifestyle.

Think about it. For decades, India has followed the global model: import more oil, build bigger refineries, chase higher GDP through energy-intensive industry and transport. We measure progress by how many “energy slaves” we command — the invisible machines that do our work. The result? When a distant conflict closes a strait halfway across the world, our farmers pay more for diesel, our housewives pay more for cooking gas, and our factories slow down. The war simply pulls the thread that was already loose.

Illich called this the “radical monopoly” of high-energy industry. Once society crosses a certain level of energy use, the industry does not just supply energy — it reshapes how we live, where we go, and who holds power. We stop walking or cycling because cars are faster. We stop growing food locally because global supply chains are cheaper — until they are not. We accept that a handful of countries and corporations control our daily life because “that is how modern energy works.” The war shows us the cost of this acceptance. Every time a tanker is delayed or a drone strikes a terminal, ordinary people lose time, money, and peace of mind.

Why is India hit so hard? Because we are in a strange middle position. We are not yet as locked in as the United States or Europe, but we have moved far enough away from self-reliant, low-energy living that shocks travel quickly through our system. India imports nearly 85 percent of its crude oil. When global prices rise, the cost is passed straight to the kitchen and the field. A family in India may not understand the geopolitics of Hormuz, but they feel it when the monthly budget no longer stretches. This is not just economics — it is a daily erosion of dignity and choice.

The possibilities before us are stark. One path is the familiar one: double down. Secure more long-term oil contracts, build more LNG terminals, push for faster domestic exploration, and accept higher military spending to protect sea lanes. This path promises “energy security” but actually increases dependence. It hands more power to technocrats and global players. It widens the gap between those who can afford the rising costs and those who cannot. Illich would call it crossing further above the threshold where energy no longer serves equity — it begins to corrupt it.

The other path is the one almost no one talks about — the low-energy, high-equity path that Illich described as the “third option.” A low-energy policy, he said, “allows for a wide choice of life styles and cultures.” It does not mean going back to the bullock cart. It means choosing technologies that serve people instead of enslaving them to distant supply chains. It means setting political limits on per-capita energy use so that no one — not the richest industrialist, not the most powerful bureaucrat — can command so much energy that the rest of us lose freedom.

What should India do? First, we must be honest. The war is a mirror. It shows us that our present model is fragile. Instead of rushing to import more, we can accelerate what we already do well. India has one of the world’s largest solar programmes. We can make it truly decentralised — rooftop solar for every village, community micro-grids that cannot be blockaded by any strait. We can invest in public transport and cycling infrastructure so that ordinary people are not forced to depend on costly fuel for daily movement. We can promote natural farming methods that reduce the need for energy-intensive fertilisers and diesel pumps.

Second, we need political courage to discuss energy thresholds openly. Illich believed that only participatory democracy can set such limits wisely. Let communities — farmers in north, fisherfolk in south, students in central India — join the conversation. What level of energy use keeps life fair and free? This is not a sacrifice; it is wisdom. A society that chooses to stay below the threshold keeps control in human hands rather than handing it to machines and experts.

Third, we must change the story we tell ourselves about progress. Well-being does not equal more energy slaves. A child who can walk safely to school without traffic, a farmer whose tube-well runs on sunlight, a family whose cooking does not depend on imported gas — these are signs of real strength. The war has given us a rare moment of clarity. Painful as it is, it forces us to ask: Do we want a future where every global conflict shakes our daily life, or one where we are quietly resilient because our needs are modest and locally met?

Illich ended his essay with a call that feels written for today: “The energy crisis cannot be overwhelmed by more energy inputs. It can only be dissolved, along with the illusion that well-being depends on the number of energy slaves a man has at his command.” India still has the freedom to choose. We are not yet as deeply trapped as the richest nations. Our villages still remember simpler ways. Our democracy, however imperfect, still allows public debate. This war is not just a threat — it is an invitation to build a different kind of energy future.

The question is whether we will keep chasing distant oil tankers or learn to live gracefully within the generous limits of our own land and sun. The choice we make in the coming months will shape not just our economy but the kind of society our children inherit. Let us choose wisely — not out of fear, but out of clear-eyed hope.