Policy Update
Asmatwali
Background
India’s diaspora in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries numbers approximately 9.7 million out of a total overseas Indian population of 35.4 million, according to data submitted to Parliament by the Minister of State for External Affairs, Pabitra Margherita, with 4.3 million in the UAE, 2.65 million in Saudi Arabia, 1 million in Kuwait, 830,000 in Qatar, 665,000 in Oman and 350,000 in Bahrain (Arab News, 2026). Despite comprising just over a quarter of India’s global diaspora, Gulf-based Indians remit nearly 40 per cent of India’s total inward remittances, underscoring the acute economic and humanitarian stakes whenever the region turns volatile (Arab News, 2026; Vivekananda International Foundation [VIF], 2025).
This volatility has recurred sharply in recent years. During the Twelve-Day War of June 2025, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) launched Operation Sindhu, evacuating 4,415 Indian nationals, 3,597 from Iran and 818 from Israel, using 19 special flights including three Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft, with the Government formally thanking Iran, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Armenia and Turkmenistan for facilitating the effort (DD News, 2025a).
Less than a year later, the far larger US-Israel-Iran war that began on 28 February 2026 triggered a fresh and more prolonged evacuation and welfare-support effort, with the MEA’s Additional Secretary (Gulf), Aseem Mahajan, confirming that over 2,500 Indian nationals had been evacuated from Iran via land border routes by May 2026 alone, even as millions more Indians across the wider Gulf required continuous monitoring and advisories (Tribune News Service, 2026; Business Today, 2026).
Functioning
India’s evacuation architecture functions through a layered system anchored in the MEA, its embassies and consulates, and coordination with host and transit governments. At the height of the 2025 crisis, the MEA activated 24×7 helplines and a dedicated control room, with embassies in Tehran and Tel Aviv facilitating road transport to neighbouring countries before onward repatriation flights (DD News, 2025b).
During the 2026 escalation, the MEA again stood up a special control room operating extended hours, publishing toll-free and landline helpline numbers, and instructed Indian missions across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq and Iran to operationalise phone, WhatsApp and email-based assistance channels, while cautioning citizens that all legitimate communication would come only through official “@mea.gov.in” domains and verified embassy handles (Free Press Journal, 2026).
Individual missions have served as the front line of this system. The Embassy of India in Kuwait issued a formal advisory on 28 February 2026, the day hostilities began, directing citizens to stay updated through official channels and providing a dedicated community email and embassy helpline number (Embassy of India, Kuwait, 2026).
Similarly, following intensified Iranian missile and drone activity intercepted over the UAE on the night of 13 March 2026, the Embassy of India in Abu Dhabi and the Consulate General in Dubai issued an updated advisory to the 3.5-million-strong Indian community, opening a round-the-clock helpline and asking employers to update staff location lists every 24 hours (Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, 2026, as cited in Travel and Tour World, 2026).
Performance
Multi-Theatre Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO)
Measured in sheer volume, India’s evacuation and diaspora protection response across successive regional crises demonstrates significant operational capability. During Operation Sindhu, New Delhi repatriated 4,415 individuals comprising 3,597 from Iran and 818 from Israel, utilising 19 special evacuation flights, including three Indian Air Force (IAF) C-17 Globemaster III transports. As regional airspace closures escalated into 2026, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) shifted strategy toward land-corridor extraction, successfully facilitating the overland movement of more than 2,500 additional Indian nationals out of Iran through neighbouring land borders.
Beyond protecting Indian citizens, New Delhi reaffirmed its role as a regional humanitarian first responder by extending safe-passage assistance to Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cardholders and nationals of Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other third countries.
Transnational Diplomatic Facilitation & Land Corridor Management
Because direct air routes were repeatedly disrupted by missile strikes and closed airspaces, the operation’s success hinged on multi-vector diplomatic coordination:
Northern & Western Exit Corridors: To extract stranded citizens, primarily students, pilgrims, and professionals, from northern Iran, Indian missions in Tehran, Yerevan, and Ashgabat coordinated land crossings into Armenia (via the Nurduz-Agarak border) and Turkmenistan (via Mashhad), before airlifting them to New Delhi.
Levant Exit Corridors: For evacuees in Israel, Indian posts in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Amman, and Cairo managed secure transit across land borders into Jordan and Egypt, establishing airhead staging points at Amman and Sharm el-Sheikh.
In-Situ Protection for the Broader Gulf Diaspora
Crucially, while tactical evacuations drew headlines, the primary challenge lay in managing the vastly larger in-situ diaspora numbering over 8.5 million Indians across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Rather than initiating panicked mass evacuations, the MEA and Ministry of Civil Aviation executed a strategy of monitored continuity:
Airspace & Operational Monitoring: The MEA continuously tracked airspace availability across Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Qatar to sustain commercial air bridges for those opting to leave voluntarily.
Consular Command & Community Sheltering: Embassy control centres collaborated with local Indian community associations to establish emergency relief networks, distribute advisories, and handle localised casualties, for example, by managing logistics following attacks on critical infrastructure in Kuwait.
Impact
Economic Impact
The scale of India’s Gulf diaspora means that any prolonged regional conflict carries direct consequences for remittance flows, household incomes across states such as Kerala, and India’s broader external accounts, given that Gulf-based Indians alone account for close to 40 per cent of India’s remittance receipts (Arab News, 2026; VIF, 2025). Reports during the 2026 crisis noted early signs of migrant workers facing disrupted contracts and employment uncertainty amid the conflict, with some workers returning to India as regional economic activity was affected (Wikipedia contributors, 2026b).
Diplomatic Impact
The reliance on host-government cooperation, open transit corridors, and voluntary citizen registration means the system’s effectiveness varies significantly with the political willingness of regional states to facilitate movement, as seen in the contrast between smooth Armenia- and Jordan-facilitated routes and the more constrained options available to workers in remote or interior locations without easy land access (DD News, 2025a; Tribune News Service, 2026).
This dependence on the goodwill of multiple third countries, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Egypt and Gulf states alike, also positions evacuation diplomacy as a live test of India’s bilateral capital in the region, requiring New Delhi to maintain balanced ties across Iran, Israel and the Gulf monarchies even as it leans on all of them operationally during a single crisis.
Governance Impact
The layered evacuation and advisory system, MEA control rooms, embassy helplines, IAF-assisted airlifts, and coordination with transit countries have allowed India to manage both dramatic mass-evacuation episodes and prolonged lower-intensity monitoring of a dispersed diaspora across eight or more Gulf and West Asian states simultaneously (DD News, 2025b; Free Press Journal, 2026). At the same time, each crisis has functioned as a stress test of inter-ministerial coordination between the MEA, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and overseas missions, exposing both the system’s capacity to scale rapidly and its continued dependence on reactive, crisis-triggered mobilisation rather than standing governance protocols.
Emerging Issues
i. Registration and visibility gaps: Evacuation planning depends heavily on voluntary registration with Indian missions; a large share of the estimated 9.7-million-strong Gulf diaspora, particularly low-wage workers under sponsorship-based employment systems, may remain unregistered and harder to track in a fast-moving crisis (Arab News, 2026; Embassy of India, Kuwait, 2026).
ii. Dependence on host and transit-country cooperation: Overland evacuation routes through Armenia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkmenistan, and continued airspace access across GCC states, depend on the political goodwill of multiple third countries, which cannot be assumed in every future contingency (DD News, 2025a; Wikipedia contributors, 2026a).
iii. Ad hoc versus institutionalised response: While control rooms and helplines have been stood up rapidly in both 2025 and 2026, evacuation capacity, including IAF aircraft allocation and charter arrangements, has largely been mobilised reactively rather than through a standing, pre-positioned mechanism (DD News, 2025b; Business Today, 2026).
iv. Disinformation and impersonation risks: The MEA has had to explicitly warn citizens against fraudulent emails and unofficial social media accounts impersonating Indian missions during crises, underscoring a growing information-security dimension to evacuation planning (Free Press Journal, 2026).
v. Economic vulnerability of the diaspora itself: Beyond physical safety, prolonged regional instability threatens diaspora livelihoods and contract security directly, with knock-on effects for remittance-dependent households in India (Wikipedia contributors, 2026b; VIF, 2025).
vi. Consular manpower constraints: Embassies and consulates running 24×7 control rooms and helplines alongside routine consular duties face staffing pressures, particularly in high-density missions such as Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, which strain sustained round-the-clock crisis response.
vii. Funding and resourcing limitations: Charter flights, expanded helpline infrastructure and welfare support during a crisis are largely financed through discretionary or supplementary allocations rather than dedicated standing budgets, which can constrain the speed and scale of mobilisation.
viii. Dependence on diaspora associations: Embassy control centres lean heavily on local Indian community associations for last-mile outreach, shelter and casualty management; this works well where such associations are strong but leaves gaps in areas with a thinner organised diaspora presence.
Limitations and Critical Assessment
A balanced assessment of India’s evacuation architecture also needs to weigh its structural weaknesses alongside its operational successes. Migrant registration and welfare data remain fragmented across the MEA, individual missions and labour-sending state governments, with no single, real-time database to draw on for a rapid headcount when a crisis breaks out.
Limited seats on charter flights and constrained land-corridor capacity also raise unresolved questions of evacuation prioritisation, between students, women, the elderly and low-wage workers, that the current system has not addressed through any publicly articulated framework. Women employed as domestic workers, along with other informal-sector employees working outside formal contracts or organised community networks, remain among the hardest groups to reach through existing registration and advisory channels, leaving a persistent information-asymmetry gap at the margins of the diaspora the system is meant to protect.
Way Forward
India’s experience across the 2025 and 2026 Gulf crises suggests the need to move from largely reactive, crisis-triggered evacuation mobilisation toward a more institutionalised, standing framework. This could include mandatory or strongly incentivised registration of Indian nationals with local missions through existing platforms, pre-identified charter and IAF airlift arrangements activated at defined trigger thresholds, and standing memoranda of understanding with key transit states such as Armenia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkmenistan that proved critical in 2025 (DD News, 2025a; Tribune News Service, 2026).
Sustained investment in embassy-level crisis communication infrastructure, of the kind demonstrated by the Kuwait and Abu Dhabi missions’ rapid advisory issuance, alongside continued public guidance to rely only on verified “@mea.gov.in” channels, should be extended uniformly across all Gulf missions rather than scaled up only after a crisis begins (Embassy of India, Kuwait, 2026; Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, 2026, as cited in Travel and Tour World, 2026; Free Press Journal, 2026).
Given the scale of remittances and livelihoods at stake, India should also consider deeper coordination with GCC labour ministries on contract-continuity protections for Indian workers during regional conflict, ensuring that the diaspora’s economic security, not only its physical evacuation, is built into India’s Gulf crisis-response architecture going forward (Arab News, 2026; Wikipedia contributors, 2026b).
References
- Arab News. (2026, April 19). Despite small diaspora share, Gulf-based Indians send home 40% of remittances. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2597684/world
- Business Today. (2026, May 18). 2,551 Indians evacuated from Iran via land routes as MEA activates 24/7 West Asia war helplines. https://www.businesstoday.in/bt-tv/whats-hot/video/2551-indians-evacuated-from-iran-via-land-routes-as-mea-activates-247-west-asia-war-helplines-532027-2026-05-18
- DD News, Prasar Bharati. (2025a, June 27). Operation Sindhu: Over 4,400 Indians evacuated from Iran and Israel, says MEA. Government of India. https://ddnews.gov.in/en/operation-sindhu-over-4400-indians-evacuated-from-iran-and-israel-says-mea/
- DD News, Prasar Bharati. (2025b, June 25). Operation Sindhu: 2,295 Indians evacuated from Iran, 604 from Israel as India steps up rescue efforts. Government of India. https://ddnews.gov.in/en/operation-sindhu-2295-indians-evacuated-from-iran-604-from-israel-as-india-steps-up-rescue-efforts/
- Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, UAE. (2026, March 14). Travel advisory for Indian nationals in the UAE. Government of India. https://www.indembassyuae.gov.in/
- Embassy of India, Kuwait. (2026, February 28). Advisory to Indian nationals in Kuwait. Government of India. https://indembkwt.gov.in/pdf/Advisory%20Feb2026.pdf
- Free Press Journal. (2026, March 4). Iran vs US-Israel war: India sets up MEA control room, shares embassy helplines to assist citizens stranded in Gulf amid Middle East tensions. https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/iran-vs-us-israel-war-india-sets-up-mea-control-room-shares-embassy-helplines-to-assist-citizens-stranded-in-gulf-amid-middle-east-tensions
- Travel and Tour World. (2026, June 14). Stay informed: Official travel advisory for Indian nationals in the UAE. https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/s1n2wvzi0r41/
- Tribune News Service. (2026, May 11). 2,500+ evacuated from Iran: As West Asia crisis deepens, MEA activates 24/7 war room. The Tribune. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/2500-evacuated-from-iran-as-west-asia-crisis-deepens-mea-activates-24-7-war-room/
- Vivekananda International Foundation. (2025, August 4). Indian diaspora and remittance flows: Trends, impacts, and perspectives. https://www.vifindia.org/article/2025/august/04/Indian-Diaspora-and-Remittance-Flows-Trends-Impacts-and-Perspectives
- Wikipedia contributors. (2026a, May 28). Operation Sindhu. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sindhu
- Wikipedia contributors. (2026b, July 1). Remittances to India. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittances_to_India
About the Contributor
Asmatwali is a research and editorial intern at IMPRI. He is a scholar in the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University. Earlier, he worked on two project reports based on semi-structured interviews for the think tank JINF, Japan.
Acknowledgment
I am writing to express my sincere gratitude to IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute) for providing me with the opportunity to prepare this policy update article and for fostering a rigorous learning environment that connects research with public policy practice. I also extend my sincere thanks to Sruti Halder & Pragya Raghav for their valuable feedback, useful suggestions, and support in shaping this article in the required policy-update format.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the organisation.
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