Best of BS Opinion: Staying watchful as the systems shift around us

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

There are moments when the world feels like a dimly lit campsite where every rustle in the bushes sounds a little too close, and every flicker of the fire casts shadows longer than they ought to. That strange, instinctive alertness, the kind that reminds you of the popular saying ‘sleep with one eye open’, is increasingly the rhythm of our public life. It is not paranoia but muscle memory for a world constantly in flux, where even routine systems now demand the vigilance of a light sleeper who can sense the tremor of a twig before it snaps. Let’s dive in. 

That half-wakefulness defines aviation today. IndiGo’s mass cancellations under the new duty-time norms weren’t just a scheduling hiccup, they were the aviation equivalent of realising that you forgot to lock the door, notes our first editorial. Airlines had more than a year to prepare for tighter rest rules aimed at curbing fatigue, yet chronic underinvestment in workforce planning left them exposed. Add a weak training ecosystem and a regulatory push for rested, well-supported pilots, and the industry’s eyelids are now forced permanently half-open. 

That same sharpened watchfulness defines the groundwater crisis unfolding below our feet. The latest national report shows aquifers across India groaning under nitrate, fluoride, arsenic, uranium, salinity and heavy metals, an entire toxic periodic table stealthily rising through wells and handpumps, highlights our second editorial. Villages are discovering not isolated breaches but multi-contaminant cocktails, a sign of aquifer-level decay. Reforms in agricultural use, tougher waste regulation and decentralised treatment systems are no longer precautionary, they are survival instincts. 

In the financial sector, RBI deputy governor Swaminathan J writes that the RBI’s new regulatory proposals are best understood through this same lens of alert adaptability. The banking system is stronger than it was a decade ago, and clinging to rules from a crisis era would be like insisting on standing guard with torches long after sunrise. With better capital buffers, sharper supervision and more accountable boards, regulation now evolves in real time, always awake, always adjusting. 

Yet vigilance can curdle into fear, warns Ajay Kumar, examining the rise of habitual complainants in the bureaucracy who weaponise accountability to harass honest officers. In a bureaucracy already wary of missteps, frivolous digital complaints force civil servants into the posture of someone sleeping with one eye open, alert not for wrongdoing but for ambush. Unless reforms penalise malicious accusations and empower leadership to discern intent, caution will continue to choke initiative. 

Finally, Neha Bhatt reviews Mafia Queens of India by S Hussain Zaidi with Velly Thevar, a fast-moving collection tracing women who built empires in the shadows, figures who lived permanently between sleep and vigilance, navigating danger by instinct. While the stories thrill, their inner lives remain partly veiled, reminding us that even the most formidable minds survive by learning to stay half-awake in a world that rarely sleeps. 

Stay tuned!