Best of BS Opinion: India's global ties, trade battles, and health debates

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

There’s a certain tension in flying a kite. The sun beats down, the string bites into your fingers, and the wind tugs with its own will, and each pull must be precise. But the thrill is also always shadowed by risk. One careless tug, one pull too hard, or misjudge another flyer’s move, and your kite is sliced out of the sky. That delicate balance of ambition and caution, of daring to soar while guarding your line, is not just a pastime of childhood terraces. It mirrors the way nations negotiate with rivals, regulators weigh safety against access, and companies decide whether to chase the domestic comfort zone or risk the rougher winds of global competition. Let’s dive in. 

Take Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to China in seven years, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. His meeting with Xi Jinping in Tianjin struck a softer tone, with both calling India and China “development partners, not rivals.” The words were conciliatory, yet the tug of war was visible, notes our first editorial. Modi stressed “strategic autonomy” and warned against seeing ties through a “third country lens,” while Beijing revived Panchsheel and spoke of Global South leadership. The two leaders flew their kites close, but the strings could easily tangle again. 

Closer home, the government is debating how to regulate refurbished medical devices, a Rs 1,500 crore market critical to smaller hospitals. Done right, it could lower costs, create skilled jobs, and widen access, highlights our second editorial. Done wrong, it risks patient safety. Like in kite flying, each adjustment matters: restrict outdated imports, certify refurbishment labs, and ensure transparency. The wrong pull could mean lives cut short. 

Meanwhile, writing on trade, Laveesh Bhandari argues that India’s tariff challenge is not about external disputes but deep structural flaws of low productivity and high costs. Short-term relief for exporters may help, but only labour reforms, affordable industrial land, rational power pricing, and cheaper capital can keep the kite steady against global winds. 

And Prosenjit Datta traces why Indian firms, despite a vast domestic market, rarely become global champions. Protected profits at home have dulled their edge abroad. He writes that without fierce domestic competition and consumer-first policies, India risks flying low while others soar higher. 

Finally, Neha Bhatt reviews Donald G. McNeil Jr.’s The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons From 25 Years of Covering Pandemics, where decades of pandemic reporting show how leadership choices determined whose kites stayed aloft and whose came crashing. From AIDS to Covid-19, the wrong pull often cost millions of lives. 

Stay tuned!