Best of BS Opinion: Policy heat, tech pushback, and strategic moves

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

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Picture a platform at peak hour, like how Delhi metro stations get during morning or evening hours. A train running even slightly late leads to a crowd swelling with every passing minute. Some pace, some stare down the tracks, some clutch paper cups of chai as if they alone can steady the chaos. You can almost hear the shuffle of feet and the rising hum of impatience in our writeups today as the stories pile up beside one another, each waiting for its turn on the track. Let’s dive in. 

With the GST structure entering its new two-slab simplicity, the Union government’s latest Bills attempt to stop sin goods from enjoying a sudden tax dip once the old compensation cess expires. As our first editorial explains, the Central Excise (Amendment) Bill, 2025 hikes duties on tobacco, while the Health Security se National Security Cess Bill proposes a monthly levy on the machines that make these products. The logic is tidy, but the politics appears messy. Cesses don’t reach states, and with GST revenue crawling at 1.3 per cent Y-o-Y increase in November, the fiscal platform already feels packed and anxious. 

And just behind the taxes, the digital-policy crowd also surges. The Department of Telecommunications’ SIM-binding rules for messaging apps, its six-hour logout diktat for web users, and the pre-installation push for Sanchar Saathi have rattled businesses, privacy advocates and regular users alike. Our second editorial warns that mandatory re-logins undermine productivity, forced app installs erode trust, and non-open-source code creates backdoors no one can properly examine.  

Meanwhile, the defence flank arrives in heavy boots. As Harsh V Pant and Aleksei Zakharov outline, the India-Russia summit will revisit a partnership shaped by decades of shared platforms from MiG-21 licences to BrahMos co-production. Yet diversification and wartime supply delays have slowed the rhythm, suggesting a future where Moscow remains important but no longer central. 

Banking debates crowd in next, and R Jagannathan gives them sharper edges. He argues that India’s financial ecosystem is shifting faster than regulators admit. Fintechs now sit on transaction data goldmines, mutual funds rival deposit volumes, global players circle Indian banks, and large NBFCs want a seat at the banking table. Agility, not size, becomes the ticket and institutions that fail to innovate risk being left behind on the platform, watching others board. 

Finally, Gunjan Singh presents a textured review of David Shambaugh’s Breaking the Engagement, an account of a US-China relationship that has shed the old optimism of engagement. Shambaugh shows how four decades of academic exchanges, corporate investments and diplomatic theatre have given way to an “indefinite comprehensive competitive rivalry”, intensified under Xi Jinping’s nationalism and Trump-era trade hostility.  

Stay tuned!