Best of BS Opinion: Climate change summit, pandemic mismanagement, and more

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for Monday

Last week, with the second wave of Covid-19 ravaging the country, the government belatedly announced steps to increase the supply of vaccines, expanding access to those above 18 years, and allowing states and the private sector to buy directly from manufacturers. The moves, though long overdue, have provoked protests from opposition parties principally at the manufacturers charging a higher price for vaccines they supply to the states and a still higher one for private hospitals. This criticism does not stand up to scrutiny, writes Mihir Sharma. With the government programme creaking under the strain, private health care must come to the rescue, and it will only do so at scale if it is not a money-losing enterprise, he points out here.

Other views today examine the recent virtual climate change summit, the banking sector’s absurd imposition of KYC norms, India’s currency management and the payments bank model

The two-day virtual climate summit revealed that the obstructionist attitude of the previous US administration when it came to global cooperation on climate change was a thing of the past. But it will not be taken seriously across the world unless it is matched by legally binding frameworks that cannot be easily dissolved by some successor to Joe Biden who shares Donald Trump’s views on the environment, the top edit argues here

Debashis Basu makes the case for banks to end the arbitrary freeze on accounts when customers fail to update t routine KYC details. Read it here

Analysing the performance of payments banks, Tamal Bandyopadhyay points out that they do not enjoy a level playing field with commercial banks and pure-play payments service providers. Read it here.

The US Treasury in its latest assessment of currency practices and macroeconomic policies has kept India on the monitoring list along with countries such as China, Japan, and Germany. The second edit explains why India is not using its currency for to gain unfair advantage. Read it here

Quote for the day

The figures on Covid infections that the government is releasing are actually an underestimate

Dr Manas Gumta, general secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors in West Bengal, to the Observer