India's role in Qatar's food security crisis

Food security has been high on Qatar’s agenda long before the ongoing crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) erupted nearly 15 weeks ago. The Arabian country’s scorching heat, high salt content in its soil, minimal rainfall, and a lack of fresh water have all made local agricultural production extremely challenging, forcing the Qataris to depend on food imports.

Prior to the closure of the Saudi-Qatari border on June 5, the Arabian emirate imported roughly 90 percent of its food through the Abu Samra crossing. Yet the severance of ties between Doha and the quartet members – Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – has forced Qatar to restructure its food import routes. Although many have noted Turkey, Iran, and Oman’s significant roles in helping Doha meet food security requirements, India too has been an important partner of the Qataris as they restructure their import lines to circumvent the quartet’s blockade.

India has aided Qatar in several vital ways. First, the two countries established a close partnership, which has helped Doha deal with the issue of food security amid the ongoing row. For years India has assisted the Gulf country in terms of increasing its growth of livestock and crops; Doha’s goal has been to increase indigenous agricultural production to raise production of its own food from 10 to 70 percent.

In fact, in recent years Qatar and India have established joint business and investment ventures, specifically in bolstering Qatar’s agricultural resources. In 2013, Doha invested $500 million into an Indian food production company, Bush Foods Overseas, to increase food supplies.

Qatar has also bought farmland in Asia and parts of Kenya as a solution to its own infertile land. These investments, especially with India, have cushioned the Qatari government throughout the past three months. Additionally, to immediately provide relief for Qatar’s food insecurity, New Delhi has sent food and supplies to Doha through direct shipping routes linking Qatar’s Hamad Port to India’s ports in Mundra and Nhava Sheva (otherwise known as the Jawaharlal Nehru Port).

India, while maintaining diplomatic neutrality in the crisis, has many numerous reasons to continue its direct trade with, and aid to, Qatar. The Arabian emirate is home to around 700,000 Indian expatriates. Most of these expats are unskilled migrant workers who send remittances (to the tune of an around $3 billion annually) back home to their families.

Indian workers contribute significantly to Qatar, particularly as it prepares for the 2022 World Cup. Due to this unique migrant worker-expatriate relationship, India has even higher stakes in Qatar’s well-being throughout the GCC’s ongoing crisis, even if New Delhi maintains a neutral position on the row to avoid damaging India’s partnerships with the quartet countries.

Aside from all of the Indian nationals that live in Qatar, Doha and New Delhi also have a symbiotic relationship in place that would hurt both sides if broken. Qatar currently supplies India with the majority of its liquefied natural gas, and accounts for 65 percent of India’s energy consumption.

After Japan and South Korea, India is the third largest destination for Qatari exports. India supplies the Gulf country with foodstuffs and agricultural technology, as well as with all of the human resources who move to Qatar to find work. New Delhi has worked to solidify this relationship, as it establishes stronger roots in the Arabian Peninsula and across the greater Middle East, and would loathe letting go of such a fragile budding alliance.

Officials in Doha are not naive enough to expect any resolution of the crisis soon. Not only has the Kuwaiti emir been attempting to mediate the GCC’s crisis to no avail, but the recent phone call between the Emir of Qatar and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia’s only served to exacerbate tensions between Doha and Riyadh.

The prospects of Qatar separating from the GCC, either officially or unofficially, is forcing the Arabian emirate to chart a new course on the international stage with three of its fellow GCC states likely to maintain severed relations with Doha for the foreseeable future.

Despite being an Arabian monarchy that shares so much in common with other GCC members, Qatar will become increasingly linked to India and other countries outside the Arabian Peninsula to maintain its prosperity without meeting the quartet’s unrealistic demands.

One of the Saudi/UAE-led bloc’s miscalculations that resulted in a failure to pressure Qatar into capitulation has to do with the international community’s rejection of their campaign against Doha. Whereas officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi likely expected more governments outside of the quartet, particularly Western ones, to embrace the Saudi/Emirati narrative, that has not been the case. To the contrary, major powers such as India have demonstrated their keen interest in maintaining ties with Doha.

Officials in New Delhi do not view Qatar as a menace, instead they see the gas-rich country as an important Middle Eastern partner. Now that New Delhi has made major contributions to Qatar’s success in terms of avoiding a food security crisis, the Indians are set to expand their ties with Doha politically and economically.