India announced Tuesday that it would scale down the chartered evacuation airlift that has ferried more than 38,000 of its nationals out of the Gulf since early March, framing the wind-down as a vote of confidence in the Iran-Israel ceasefire scheduled to take effect at midnight GMT Wednesday and as the first practical step in what officials described as a broader recalibration of India’s post-war footprint across the region.

The External Affairs Ministry said the final wave of Operation Sankalp III flights — the codename it has used for the airlift since March 8 — would depart Dubai, Doha, Kuwait City and Muscat on Wednesday and Thursday, after which the dedicated bridge of Air India, IndiGo and Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft would be stood down. A smaller commercial-priority allocation will remain in place through April 30 for stranded workers, medical cases and the families of Indian nationals who died during the war, of whom at least eleven have been confirmed by Indian missions across the Gulf.

“The decision to taper Sankalp III reflects an operational assessment, not a political one,” External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said during a brief appearance before reporters outside the Lok Sabha. “Our missions in the Gulf will remain on heightened readiness through the first weeks of the ceasefire, and we retain the ability to surge capacity within twenty-four hours if the situation deteriorates. But the families and workers who wished to come home have largely been brought home. What remains now is the longer task of helping our diaspora rebuild lives in the region in which they have chosen to live.”

The numbers behind the airlift, disclosed in a written reply tabled by Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, offered the fullest public accounting yet of the war’s impact on India’s roughly 8.9 million-strong Gulf diaspora. Of the 38,400 evacuees flown out since March 8, the ministry said, the largest cohorts came from the United Arab Emirates (14,200), Saudi Arabia (8,600), Kuwait (6,300) and Qatar (4,100), with the remainder drawn from Bahrain, Oman and small populations stranded in Iraq and southern Iran. About 62 percent were workers in construction, hospitality and domestic service; another 19 percent were students and short-term visitors; the balance were dependents on family visas.

Indian officials said the airlift’s wind-down would coincide with a quieter but more consequential diplomatic shift. New Delhi has begun internal deliberations on the medium-term composition of its crude import basket, which through the war has tilted further toward Russian Urals grades and discounted West African cargos and away from the Gulf supplies that historically anchored Indian refineries’ slate. A senior official at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, said the ministry was working through scenarios in which Iranian condensates — currently sanctioned and unavailable to Indian refiners — could re-enter the basket in late 2026 or 2027 if a broader nuclear understanding emerged from the post-ceasefire diplomacy.

“For Indian refiners, the question is not whether the war ends this week, but what kind of crude market exists six months from now,” said Anirudh Menon, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “If Brent settles in the low nineties and Russian discounts narrow as the war premium fades, Indian buyers lose a meaningful cost advantage that has shaped the import slate since 2022. New Delhi’s interest is in a Gulf that resumes normal flows quickly, and in a sanctions architecture flexible enough to let Indian refiners hedge against any one supplier becoming dominant again.”

The economic stakes are substantial. India imported an average of 4.9 million barrels per day of crude oil in March, with Russia supplying roughly 38 percent and Gulf producers — chiefly Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UAE — accounting for another 46 percent. Officials at Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum, the country’s two largest state-owned refiners, told a closed-door briefing of Petroleum Ministry officials on Monday that the war had cost the sector an estimated $2.1 billion in foregone refining margins and unplanned hedging costs, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The same officials said both companies were maintaining their existing forward purchase commitments and would not chase a sharp post-ceasefire spot-market decline that they expected to be partly retraced.

Beyond energy, the labor side of India’s Gulf relationship has emerged as a quieter source of concern. Remittances from the Gulf to India, which exceeded $54 billion in the fiscal year ended last March, are expected to drop by between four and seven percent in the current quarter, according to a preliminary estimate circulated last week by the Reserve Bank of India’s economic policy department. State governments in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh — the largest exporters of Gulf labor — have begun coordinating returnee reintegration programs, with Kerala’s chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, announcing on Monday a state-level rapid-skilling initiative aimed at the roughly 6,200 returnees from his state who have indicated they do not intend to go back to Gulf employment immediately.

“The men and women who came home will mostly return,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst who tracks Gulf labor markets. “Construction in Riyadh, Doha and Dubai cannot run without them, and the wage differentials remain decisive even after the war. But there will be a renegotiation at the margin. Workers from Kerala and Uttar Pradesh will demand stronger contract protections, faster repatriation guarantees and, increasingly, insurance products that didn’t exist in the prewar market. Indian state governments will have leverage in those conversations that they did not have two months ago.”

In New Delhi, the Modi government has been careful to thread its public messaging on the ceasefire between two competing pressures: a desire to claim credit for what officials describe as India’s behind-the-scenes contributions to the Islamabad process, and an unwillingness to give Pakistan’s mediating role any further prominence than it has already attained. A senior official at the National Security Council Secretariat said India had provided technical input to the Muscat monitoring cell now standing up under Omani auspices and would contribute an unspecified number of naval and air force personnel to its operations once a formal request is received.

Indian officials said additional steps on consular outreach, returnee resettlement and post-war energy diplomacy would be announced in stages over the coming weeks, with a fuller statement expected from Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the ceasefire takes hold.