Sunil Bajaj - Group Director - CAD, ABG | Former Director - Essar Group

 India’s approach to buying oil has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. We used to rely on a very small group of suppliers, mostly in the Middle East, but the world of 2026 looks much more complicated. With the U.S. recently granting a 30-day tariff-free window to process Russian crude, many are asking if India is actually building a long-term safety net or just jumping from one crisis to the next. As an economist looks at the numbers, it becomes clear that India is trying to solve a massive equation: how to keep energy cheap enough to fuel growth while staying on good terms with global powers. The 30-Day Waiver: A Tactical Pause The U.S. Treasury’s decision to allow a one-month window for Indian refiners to unload Russian oil is a fascinating piece of economic theater. From a purely logical standpoint, this isn’t a gift. It is a calculated move to prevent a global supply shock. If India were suddenly forced to stop processing millions of barrels of Russian oil, t...

 The dream of a frictionless, borderless marketplace has run aground. Since the early 1990s, the global economy operated on the assumption that capital and goods should naturally migrate to wherever they could be handled most efficiently. This was the golden age of globalisation. Today, however, that logic is being dismantled. We are entering a period defined by geo-economics, where economic activity is no longer just a measure of prosperity, but the primary theater for exercising national power. This transformation is far more than a temporary disruption of trade routes. It represents a fundamental restructuring of how sovereign states perceive their vulnerabilities and their strengths. From Cost Savings to Strategic Buffers During the peak of the globalised era, corporations and governments obsessed over cost-optimisation. The goal was to trim every possible cent from a supply chain by relying on just-in-time delivery systems. That model assumed a stable world. Recent shocks ha...

 There’s a shift I have been noticing more often in recent conversations, one that doesn’t always make headlines but is becoming difficult to overlook. When I speak with founders or sit in on internal discussions, the same theme keeps surfacing. Entrepreneurial energy in India is no longer centred around a few large cities. It’s spreading out. And in many ways, it’s becoming more grounded as it does. What I find particularly interesting is where some of the more practical ideas are coming from. Increasingly, they’re being built in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. These are not always the kind of ventures that attract early attention, but they tend to be closely tied to real demand. There’s a certain discipline in how they are being built, less noise, more clarity. The data reflects this movement as well. India has now crossed 2 lakh recognised startups, and what stands out is that around half of these are coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities That would have been difficult to imagine not...

  Take a moment to think about what’s going on globally right now. There’s a feeling of uncertainty in the air. The rate of growth is less predictable, capital is being deployed cautiously, and even small events in the world seem to have wider ripple effects. In that context, what’s remarkable about India is not only the growth rate, but also that it’s been relatively stable. And if I had to pick something that’s driving that, it’s the services sector. This wasn’t always obvious.  For years, services were seen as an extension of growth, not the centre of it. That perception has clearly shifted. Today, services account for over 53% of India’s GDP and more than 56% of gross value added. These are not just headline numbers. They reflect where economic weight now sits. Where Consistency is Becoming an Advantage What I find interesting is not just the size of the sector, but the way it is growing. There is a certain consistency to it. While other parts of the economy tend to react ...

  There is a tendency, particularly in emerging economies like India, to view global conflict as something that sits outside the core economic model. We acknowledge it in passing, factor it into risk reports, and then return to more controllable variables such as domestic demand, policy levers, and sectoral growth. But that separation is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. India is not operating in a domestic vacuum anymore. We are embedded deeply in energy markets, capital flows, and supply chains that are directly shaped by geopolitical stress. The cost of that exposure is rising in ways that are not always immediately apparent in quarterly data. Energy shocks are now transmission mechanisms One of the clearest channels remains energy. As of 2026, India continues to import close to 85–90% of its crude oil requirement. This single dependency quietly amplifies almost every external shock. When tensions escalate in key corridors such as West Asia, the impact is not theoretica...

  The oil market has started to feel unsettled again. Not sharply, but enough to get attention. Prices are moving in a way that suggests underlying strain, and supply discussions have become more careful in tone. For India, this brings back a familiar line of thought. We have seen this play out before. The difference now is scale. We are a larger economy, consuming more energy, and relying heavily on imported crude to keep that momentum going. The Dependence We Carry India’s import dependence is now close to 88–89 percent. It has risen gradually, almost in step with economic expansion. There is no immediate alternative to this. We import because we need to. That also means global disruptions do not stay distant; they reach us, sometimes faster than expected. When Oil Moves, It Spreads Oil has a way of affecting more than just one sector. A rise in crude prices finds its way into transport, production costs, and eventually into everyday expenses. Earlier this year, prices moved shar...