Best of BS Opinion: Sparks of growth but mounting shadows of strain

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

Picture a dark room where a single candle fights for breath. Its flame rises and curls, turning shadows of even ants into giants, before shrinking again. The wax sweats, then drips, and then hardens. All the while people pretend its struggle is decorative, and the dimming glow is ambience, not warning. Maybe that is our world now, where flashes of brilliance mask the uncertainty of flicker and soft foundations remain unseen beneath brightness. Let’s dive in. 

India’s primary market is our brightest flare. IPOs raised Rs 1.77 trillion, oversubscribed issues flourish, and promoters gleefully exit through rich offer-for-sales (OFS). Yet almost half these listings now trade below issue price, a reminder of thinning wax under the dancing flame, notes our first editorial. Foreign investors sold $17 billion in secondary trades yet keep courting offerings, like moths mesmerised by heat they distrust. A tentative corporate capex revival suggests potential, though its glow remains fragile. 

Tourism, as our second editorial observes, flickers unevenly. Arrivals inch back but lag the pre-pandemic high, while budgets for global promotion have crashed from Rs 33 crore to Rs 3.07 crore, and connectivity gaps leave regions such as the North-East barely catching light of tourism. International spending rises even as visitors dip, and forecasts promise a Rs 42 trillion lift by 2035. Yet India’s flame lacks oxygen as slow visas, weak last-mile infrastructure and limited marketing dim an opportunity that waits to blaze. 

And public finance shows wax burning faster than wicks. M Govinda Rao shows states throw subsidies and freebies like sparks, but in the process, end up starving education and infrastructure. Spending on schooling has slipped, guest teachers are replacing trained staff and capital outlay is stagnating. The candle of freebies shines brightly for instant gratification, casting warm light for voters today. But tomorrow’s wick is shorter and the shadows  much thicker. 

The hills carry this tension, too. Kanika Datta writes that Uttarakhand’s winter pilgrimages bring crowds and coins but leave plastic trails, eroded slopes and noisy towns stretching beyond their bones. Tourism dazzles but eats its own base as well. She suggests a steadier flame lies in education and services where the state has potential to grow talent, not just traffic. But without planning, the candle burns hot and fast, leaving hardened, disfigured wax where light once lived. 

And the forests remind us how badly we misread flames. Amritesh Mukherjee reviews Ita Mehrotra’s Uprooted: A Graphic Account of the Struggle for Forest Rights, where communities who once tended nature’s candles are displaced. The Van Gujjars and Taungyas safeguarded biodiversity but are recast as squatters under conservation law. As their stewardship fades, so does the forest’s glow. If India ignores the people who sustain its light, the darkness waits at the edge of the room. 

Stay tuned!