Fishing boats sit idle at Mumbai’s Sassoon Dock, where diesel costs have pushed a battered trade to the edge and left one of the city’s most important harbours unusually quiet. Boat owner Shekhar Chogle has kept his vessel tied up since the conflict began, waiting for fuel prices to fall far enough to make going out to sea worth the risk.
Chogle said his income has fallen sharply because his boat has not been able to leave port, and he warned that if diesel prices do not come down soon, he does not know how the family will survive. Diesel has climbed beyond $1.20 per litre, or $4.54 a US gallon, a price shock that has overwhelmed the cooperatives that usually help fishers with affordable fuel, ice and equipment. Some boats are still heading out despite the cost, and morning markets are continuing with smaller catches, but the strain is visible across the dock.
Sassoon Dock was built in 1875 and once served as a trading gateway to the Gulf before becoming a commercial centre for textiles, spices and opium. In recent decades, it grew into the heart of Mumbai’s fishing trade, the kind of place where the unloading of nets, rumbling diesel engines, hauling of ice and shouts of fishmongers usually fill the air from dawn. That daily rhythm has been broken by a fuel crisis that is hitting fishing communities throughout India and Asia, not just in this city.
The announced two-week ceasefire agreement between Iran, the United States and Israel has given the industry a glimmer of hope, but analysts caution that fuel supply normalisation will take time. For fishers like Chogle, that means relief is not immediate and the market is still running on thin margins. The dock may not stay silent for long, but the people who depend on it are already counting the cost of every day it does.
