On a sweltering afternoon, Yogesh Kumar parks his battery-powered autorickshaw beside a gas station in southern New Delhi and watches the fuel prices flash across the digital board.
For Kumar, the rising numbers represent the shrinking size of the evening meal he can afford to bring home to his family of five.
“People see my electric rickshaw and think fuel price hikes do not affect me,” he told UCA News.
Kumar lives in a slum settlement where electricity access is uneven. Although official electric vehicle charging rates remain relatively low, he cannot benefit because his home does not have a private electricity meter.
“I have to pay a local parking boss a flat 150 rupees (US$1.75) every night to park and charge from his grid. That is three times what a wealthy homeowner pays to charge an electric car,” he said.
While state-run oil companies have rolled out thousands of EV battery-swapping stations across major cities, the financial shock of rising fuel prices in general have also hit Kumar
India recently raised gas prices to about 102 rupees (US$1.19) per liter, while diesel averages around 95 rupees.
The increase has driven up transportation costs for commercial trucks carrying essential goods across the country, causing prices of basic commodities to surge.
“My vehicle runs on electricity, but my children run on food,” Kumar said, pointing toward a nearby wholesale market where the prices of onions and lentils have jumped by 15 percent in a week.
“The trucks that bring flour to Delhi run on diesel. When their fuel becomes expensive, my grocery bill rises. I saved money by moving away from petrol, but I lost all those savings at the vegetable market,” he said.
“In India, the poor always end up paying for a rich man’s war,” he added, referring to tensions involving Iran, the United States and Israel that have rattled the global economy.
For India’s vast underclass of casual workers, street vendors and daily wage earners, the economic shock is the consequence of a geopolitical conflict unfolding thousands of miles away.
The conflict has disrupted global energy markets. In India, crude oil prices climbed to a high of US$107.84 per barrel. Government data showed that state-owned oil companies absorbed the impact for three months, incurring estimated losses of more than US$78 million per day before authorities approved four fuel price increases in less than two weeks.
Imtiyaz Mir, an economics research scholar at the University of Kashmir, said “the artificial dam” that held back fuel prices had finally broken.
“The state companies are still losing slightly less than US$62.9 million per day, and the series of hikes has sharply increased retail fuel prices,” he told UCA News.
While economists debate the impact on India’s fiscal deficit, the reality for poor households is far more immediate. Millions of people are struggling to cope with the rising cost of daily survival.
Among the hardest hit are delivery riders and logistics couriers who form the backbone of India’s booming digital economy.
“Our payouts from delivery apps are fixed per trip, but our operating costs are completely variable,” said 24-year-old Anjana Devi, an e-commerce delivery worker in Delhi.
Anjana rides a secondhand motorcycle and travels up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) daily delivering packages.
Last week, she spent about 200 rupees a day on petrol. That amount has now nearly doubled, sharply cutting into her income.
“What I am paying extra for fuel equals my younger brother’s school tuition fees,” she told UCA News.
Virendra Verma, an economics professor at Chandigarh College in northern India, said the impact of fuel price increases spreads rapidly through the supply chain, from highways to local wholesale markets.
“Because diesel powers long-haul trucking and agricultural transport networks, any increase acts like an immediate tax on essential goods,” Verma told UCA News.
He said fuel prices vary across major cities and commercial hubs, worsening hardship for low-income families.
For example, gas prices in West Bengal stand at 113.51 rupees per liter, among the highest in the country, while prices in Mumbai have reached 111.21 rupees.
“The cost of transporting basic food staples from rural farms to urban wholesale markets has skyrocketed,” he added.
Mohammad Iliyas, a wholesale vegetable vendor at Azadpur Mandi in Delhi — considered Asia’s largest fruit and vegetable wholesale market — said truck operators have raised freight charges by 10 to 15 percent in the past week alone to offset higher diesel costs.
“I cannot absorb that cost myself, so I have to pass it on. Tomatoes, potatoes and green chilies are all more expensive today than they were 10 days ago,” he told UCA News.
For millions living on the outskirts of India’s major cities, commuting is not a convenience but a necessity for survival. As bus fares and shared autorickshaw rates rise alongside fuel prices, transportation costs are consuming a growing share of low-income wages.
Laxmi Kumari, a domestic worker in southern Delhi, commutes daily from the outskirts of the city. She earns 9,000 rupees a month, an income increasingly strained by rising prices.
“I had to borrow 3,000 rupees from a local moneylender this month just to buy groceries,” she told UCA News.
According to the Ministry of Labor and Employment, about 90 percent of India’s workforce — roughly 550 million people — work in the informal sector.
They include casual laborers, construction workers, street vendors and domestic workers like Kumari, all of whom are bearing the brunt of rising fuel prices.
“Everything has become expensive. What can we do?” she said with a sigh.
