Best of BS Opinion: Money fever, FB outage drives home a toxic reality

Here are the top BS Opinion articles of the day

Here is the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for Saturday.

An international consortium of journalists has unearthed the “Pandora” list of secret stashes in tax havens. In this context, T N Ninan in his weekly column notes that the overall money stashed away in tax havens is estimated at between $5.6 trillion and $32 trillion, numbers to make your eyes pop. An International Monetary Fund paper some years ago quoted estimates of lost tax revenue at $500-700 billion. That is big, but less than 1 per cent of global GDP. Read here...

Policy makers would be wrong to look at the current power crisis and assume it means that more climate-friendly regulation is the problem. Power crises are being caused for the same reasons in 2021 that they were decades ago: Unreformed pricing, poor management of infrastructure, and patchy governance. It’s got nothing to do with climate action, writes Mihir S Sharma. Read here...

People use Facebook and its subsidiaries for many reasons, ranging from casual interactions with friends, to generating income in various ways. Users cannot step off these platforms because there are no practical alternatives. This means constant exposure to toxic garbage, notes Devangshu Datta. Read here...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“As we further accelerate the pace of economic recovery, it is important not to rest in the glory of what has been achieved but work tirelessly on what remains to be done.”

 

Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das