BLOOMING INSIGHTS

A narrow strait. A shooting war. And billions of people wondering if dinner will get cooked tonight. The Spark That Started It All This isn't a slow-moving energy policy story. This is a live crisis, ignited on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran. Tehran's response was swift — and devastating for global energy: Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping described as the first such closure in recorded history. Some 44.2 million tonnes of LPG passed through that bottleneck last year about 121,000 tonnes every single day, equal to 30% of all global seaborne LPG exports.  By March 9, the price of crude oil had surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.  War-risk insurance premiums for vessels operating in the Gulf surged in some cases by more than 1,000% prompting insurers to cancel cover for ships entirely. One strait closed. The world's gas supply went w...

Think about what you bought this week.  Maybe it  was a 5G data pack, a quick-commerce delivery of  Maggie , or a subscription to a streaming service. Now, try to find those on a shopping list from 2012. You  can’t . Back then, we were still tracking the price of VCDs and giving a massive chunk of our "essential" budget to raw grains and kerosene.   For over a decade, India has been measuring its economic heartbeat  like   inflation, industrial growth, and wholesale trade ,  using a 2011-12  benchmark .  But as of February 2026, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI ) has hit the reset button. By shifting the base years for the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Wholesale Price Index (WPI), and the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), India  isn't  just updating spreadsheets;  it’s  finally acknowledging that the way we live and spend has fundamentally changed. We are no longer navigating the econom...