Best of BS Opinion: New normal climate, Govt must not micromanage & more

Here are the top BS Opinion articles of the day.

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

Last week, the National Statistical Office released the Annual Report of its Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), covering the period between July 2019 and June 2020. This period included the second quarter of the calendar year 2020, when the Indian economy was reeling from a stringent lockdown meant to contain the spread of Covid-19. In this context, our lead editorial notes that, while the PLFS does provide valuable information about the state of the workforce, it comes too late to make a tangible difference to policy. Read here

The PLI reflects a micromanagement approach to policy that gives governmental officials, who have little experience of commercial activities, the discretionary authority to define what “win” means and to choose the “winners”, writes Nitin Desai

Erratic weather events are tending to become the new normal. Since little can be done to prevent calamitous changes in climate, the only way to minimise their adverse impact is by learning to live with them — adapting to the new normal, argues our second editorial

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“We both agreed strongly that any future government in Afghanistan has to be inclusive and fully representative of the Afghan people... Ultimately it has to be an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process”

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after meeting External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar