Best of BS Opinion: A quest for chips, cleaner air, and global leverage

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

Have you ever noticed how a mocking bird is never content with a single tune? On certain evenings, it sits outside someone’s window and strings together borrowed notes. It borrows, bends, and blends sounds from everywhere like a snatch of a koel’s call, a whistle like the metro doors, even something that sounds like a ringtone.The result is not pure invention but a patchwork chorus, familiar yet strangely new. Nations too often sing like mocking birds, weaving together borrowed strains of ambition, struggle, and contradiction. Let’s dive in. 

In one verse, as our first editorial notes, India is trying to hum a high-tech melody through its semiconductor mission. The first phase gave us our first locally made chips, the second now promises an ecosystem instead of just subsidies. Investors are drawn to Gujarat’s chemical hubs, but experts warn that without faster clearances and sharper incentives, India risks sounding off-key against peers like the US or Japan. The refrain here is clear: refine the rhythm, or risk losing the beat of global capital. 

Meanwhile, there is a darker verse on the horizon too. A study by the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago shows air pollution stealing 3.5 years from Indian lives, with Delhi residents losing over eight. The government’s programme has nudged levels down in some cities, but compared to China’s dramatic cleanup, India’s measures seem faint, highlights our second editorial. The mocking bird sings here in a strained voice, reminding us that smog has become a year-round dirge, not a seasonal complaint. 

And in his column, Ajay Chhibber describes how Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric strike like a discordant chord, straining India-US ties and pushing India closer to Brics. The geoeconomic tremor threatens India’s access to G7 markets, even as rivals like Mexico and Vietnam gain ground. Chhibber argues that India must turn this disruption into a spur for long-delayed second-gen reforms, from rationalising GST to opening trade talks, so that the economy can find a steadier rhythm at home and abroad. 

Harsh V Pant and Atul Kumar capture another improvisation at the Tianjin SCO summit, where India tried to balance notes of cooperation with China alongside vigilance at contested borders. Modi’s presence signalled a deliberate strategy of centrist multi-alignment, asserting autonomy in a crowded, multipolar stage. The mocking bird here sounds cautious but insistent, blending rivalry with pragmatism. 

Finally, in Mohua Chatterjee’s review of Sayantan Ghosh’s The Aam Aadmi Party – The Untold Story of a Political Uprising and its Undoing, the bird’s song turns sad. Once a bright new tune of idealism, the party has slid into dissonance as it became over-centralised, adrift from its founding notes, and finally echoing the very politics it sought to disrupt. 

Stay tuned!