Best of BS Opinion: How we manage change can turn the future around

Hello, and welcome to BS Views, our daily wrap of the opinion page. Today's columnists assess change, and the various forms it takes - from Trump's flip-flops to changing the ideal of what a company should do, to the Indian cricket team's leadership churn, from data that throws up new realities to new realities that must force change on our borders. Read on. 

 

In our lead column today, Max Hastings argues that US President Donald Trump's dislike of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as his penchant for deal-making, has given Russia's President Vladimir Putin a clear upper hand at the negotiating table. Witness how Trump refused to show up for the peace talks because Putin wasn't going to be there. The Russian president is probably gambling that if he hangs on, the transactional US president will sooner or later walk away, because he sees nothing in Ukraine for himself, allowing Russia to eventually become the hegemon in the region.

 

In today's National Interest, Shekhar Gupta notes that Pakistan and its proxies are prone to a predictable seven-year itch. In other words, India gets about seven years of deterrent capability after each terror attack. Will this near-war, India’s strongest military response so far, buy India another seven years of deterrence? While it was a formidable punitive package, the facts and history, are yet to convince that an Indian deterrence against use of terror as state policy has been established. To do this, he writes, after this is over, India must look generations ahead and invest in one front only. A big economy with faith in its future needs defence that isn’t just impregnable, but deters at least one of its two adversaries. Done right, this one front will cease to matter. 

 

R Gopalakrishnan considers the old debate about family-managed versus professional-run companies and comes away convinced that the future belongs to 'professional entrepreneurial managers', a mix of efficiency and startup thinking. Nonetheless, he remains committed to so-called 'deergha ayush' (long lived) enterprises because of their social as well as economic value as long as they remain purposeful. As a cautionary tale, he points to a technically deerga-ayush company, Credit Suisse, that proved it is expensive for society to extend the life of a company that is no longer capable or purposeful. 

 

Devangshu Datta looks to an unlikely source of data to understand underreporting of Covid fatalities and its impact, and over-reporting of Maha Kumbh visitors: Indian Railways. The number of passengers on IR is yet to reach it's pre-Covid levels, he points out. The undercounting of deaths has knock-on effects such as insurance payouts as well as allocation of health resources. Similarly, he finds that Railways data doesn't really register a jump during the Maha Kumbh, suggesting that the state government's claims of a revenue windfall may not hold water. 

 

Vishal Menon notes that Australian tours appear to have a decisive role in concluding the careers of Indian batting greats. In 2012, a good 13 years ago, India's calamitous tour of Australia ended the careers of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, he recalls, and draws a parallel to the current exits of stalwarts Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. With no clear frontleader for the top job, the job now must fall to Gambhir to instil the virtues of playing Test cricket in a generation of players raised on an IPL diet. In essence, he says, Gambhir has a stiff task ahead: Turn boys into men.