Best of BS Opinion: De-fanging FAANG, Modi's index of alarm, and more

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

Protests against the new farm laws have entered a crucial phase, with the Supreme Court proposing a joint committee of farmers and government representatives to discuss the points of disagreements. How negotiations pan out is an open question with an obdurate opposition meeting an implacable government. At the heart of the issue is the stability and growth of farm incomes, especially for the big farmers of Punjab who are blockading Delhi’s borders. As T C A Srinivasa Raghavan explains in his column, the Minimum Support Price at the heart of the protests seeks to smoothen the income stream for farmers and “is more like a salary. Diluting it by having competing markets is like having “variable pay, a way of reducing the actual cost to the company, which in the case of agriculture is the government”. Read his deconstruction of the issue here. 

Other views examine the emerging global challenges to the dominance of the FAANGs, the pitfalls of Narendra Modi’s popularity and the Pornhub debacle. Kanika Datta sums up the views

Google and Facebook face unprecedented regulatory challenges in the US and the European Union for their predatory business practices, tax avoidance and misuse of data, all of it flowing from excessive corporate power. T N Ninan examines the complexities of this debate and what it may imply for India. Read it here
 

Narendra Modi is popular and the Bharatiya Janata Party is winning elections. But the downside is that India has slipped on many development indices and this will soon begin to hurt the country, writes Shekhar Gupta. Read it here
 

The saga of Pornhub, after Visa and Mastercard cut off services to its creator MindGeek following a New York Times investigation, holds many lessons for online entrepreneurs, writes Devangshu Datta. Read it here
 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“There were demands for [farm] reforms from parties, experts, progressive farmers for many years. The previous governments had made promises to the farmers but never delivered”

Narendra Modi at MP Kisan Sammelan