Opinion

Best of BS Opinion: External, financial sectors need sustained engagement

Today's opinions examine India's external vulnerabilities, SCO diplomacy, the limits of industrial policy, governance questions at Tata Sons and lessons from five decades of Indian advertising

Needed: A 'give it up' on gold

The case for educating citizens about India's obsession with gold

Refocus PLI towards exports

Wider reforms, not picking winners are the answer

Questions behind the twin crises

While there has been fuzziness around the reasons precipitating the twin crises, within days of each other last month, a closer look will show a functional arbitrariness in both cases

Message from Bishkek

If the summit underlined a critical international message, it was the emergence of China and President Xi Jinping in particular as a powerful competing sphere of influence

Macroeconomic management

The Iran war and disruption in energy supplies, resulting in higher prices, created the possibility of an expansion in the CAD

Best of BS Opinion: TCS acquisition highlights changing dynamics in AI era

Today's opinions examine TCS' AI-era dealmaking, Himalayan climate risks, women's unpaid burden in livestock, India's water use and private equity's growing role in healthcare

The paradox of a 'women-friendly' sector

Rural women continue to spend nearly 286 minutes per day on household chores and caregiving - almost seven times more than men

Data centres aren't India's water villain

India's water crisis has been created by decades of treating water as free. Prosecuting the newest useralone would be a policy failure

Himalayan blunders

The fact that the Himalayas are also a zone of high seismic activity adds to the instability and unpredictability of this phenomenon

Innovative acquisitions

Comparing AI's infrastructural significance to landmark inventions like steam engine and the internet, Mr Chandrasekaran pointed out that AI was an opportunity that would unlock demand

Best of BS Opinion: Durable progress depends on systems that work

Numbers, brands and ideas may all signal progress, but it's systems, these pieces tell us, that actually decide the durability of progress

The Growth Surprise: Another blockbuster GDP print for India

India's economy has shown resilience despite tariffs and the West Asia conflict, with strong domestic demand, healthier balance sheets and investment supporting growth

Solar heat: A market waiting to be created

For these industries, their operating costs would be substantially lower if they used solar thermal systems, as solar radiation is free unlike diesel and gas

Power reforms need an urgent push

Power regulation is failing India and needs to be overhauled

The product guys

It gave up work on creating an Apple-branded electric vehicle - a decade-long effort called Project Titan - in 2024, even though it poured cash into the project and recruited aggressively

Beating the odds

The data from the expenditure side showed that private final consumption expenditure increased 7.1 per cent during the quarter, an improvement over the previous year but below the headline rate

Best of BS Opinion: Buffers cannot carry a system forever

As these pieces tell us, stability will not come from stockpiles, settlements, symbolic defences or inherited structures alone. It will come from the capacity to adapt when old buffers no longer hold

Exim Matters: India needs higher cargo volumes to attract sailings

India's exporters and importers face soaring freight costs and shipping disruptions, but subsidies may not be the answer as global shipping undergoes a technology transition

India's R&D inflection moment

India's R&D spending has hit a record 0.84% of GDP, but reaching the global technology frontier will require much higher private-sector investment and smarter public funding