Best of BS Opinion: Export power, urban shortages, and quiet shifts

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

China’s record $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025 looks impressive on the surface, but the underlying story is less reassuring. The surplus has widened even as domestic demand remains weak, global growth slows and external pressure intensifies. The imbalance reflects an economy still locked into a state-driven investment and export model that has run out of momentum, argues our first editorial. The consequences are already visible in trade tensions, political backlash in advanced economies and a disrupted development path for poorer countries. Without a course correction, the risks of sharper global and domestic shocks will only rise. 

Meanwhile, India’s urban affordable housing problem is less about lack of credit and more about the economics of supply, notes our second editorial. A recent Niti Aayog report points to high land costs, rigid planning norms, regulatory delays and the withdrawal of fiscal incentives that have made affordable projects unattractive to developers. Private equity and foreign capital have largely stayed away, and supply has collapsed. Niti Aayog calls for tax incentives, financing reforms and inclusionary zoning, contingent on state-level execution. 

Writing on alcohol regulation, K P Krishnan observes that state policy is trapped by fiscal dependence. Excise duties now form a large share of state revenues, creating a conflict between public health goals and revenue needs. The result is arbitrary taxation by category rather than alcohol content, penalising lower-strength drinks and distorting consumption. He argues for revenue optimisation instead of maximisation, taxing purely by ethanol content and repositioning the state as a health regulator rather than a rent-seeker. 

Nishant Sahdev argues that contrary to popular belief, India may already be seeing an AI-driven productivity shift, even though headline indicators show little change. GDP growth, wages and output per worker still look broadly familiar, but inside offices, IT firms, call centres and government departments, AI is reshaping how work gets done. These gains, however, rarely show up in official data because productivity metrics were designed for an industrial economy, where output rose through more labour or capital. The result is a quiet efficiency boost that statistics struggle to capture, much as they did during early electrification and computing. 

Finally, Devangshu Datta reviews Forgotten heroes of Indian science by Anand Ranganathan & Sheetal Ranganathan, a book that profiles five Indian scientists whose work flourished under colonial rule but went largely unrecognised. Drawing on extensive archival research, the authors trace how figures such as U N Brahmachari, Ram Nath Chopra and Yellapragada Subbarow made foundational contributions to medicine and bioscience despite racial barriers and severe resource constraints. Datta writes that for all its stylistic flaws, the book succeeds in restoring overdue attention to a neglected scientific legacy. 

Stay tuned!