Best of BS Opinion: Steering the ship through uncertainty and change

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There’s a line by Albert Camus that feels tailor-made for our current times: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” There’s a certain beauty in that defiance, the kind that refuses to let the frost settle. It isn’t optimism, it’s endurance dressed as poetry. To steer one’s ship through absurd seas is to acknowledge that the waves will rise, the compass will falter, and the meaning may never reveal itself, and yet, we must keep sailing anyway. Today, our writeups share that quiet persistence, the human will to navigate chaos without demanding a destination. Let’s dive in. 

When Emirates NBD’s $3-billion investment made RBL Bank its Indian outpost, it wasn’t just another deal, it was a statement of confidence in a fast-moving tide. Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui and Abu Dhabi’s IHC have also docked at Indian ports, drawn by a regulatory openness that welcomes foreign capital without surrendering control. Our first editorial notes that India’s banking seas are swelling with global currents, and yet, the ship stays steady, balancing foreign muscle with domestic direction.  

Meanwhile, the FSSAI’s decision to ban commercial drinks from using “ORS” on their labels is less a bureaucratic act and more an assertion of truth. For years, sugary concoctions disguised as health tonics have preyed on trust, an absurd notion in a world that markets illusion as nourishment. It took nearly a decade of medical voices pushing uphill to unmask this deception. Our second editorial highlights that the move may not end the chaos of misleading labels overnight, but it affirms the discipline of persistence, of the act of rowing against the corporate tide until honesty resurfaces. 

India’s regulators, increasingly acting as lawmakers, enforcers, and judges rolled into one, reflect another kind of absurd sea, one where fairness risks capsizing under too much authority, write M S Sahoo and Sumit Agrawal. Recent court rulings demand a separation of powers within Sebi and others, but the deeper struggle is institutional, to keep the ship of governance upright in constitutional waters.  

And in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, Shishir Gupta and Rishita Sachdeva draw our attention to persistence taking an agrarian shape. Against the orthodoxy that growth must mean leaving the soil behind, both states have built prosperity on the furrows of reform with shrimp ponds, irrigation canals, and milk cooperatives. Their success is a reminder that one can steer through absurd economic doctrines by trusting one’s own winds. 

Finally, Veenu Sandhu reviews Lo Bir Sendra: A Hunter in the Burning Forest by Jaipal Singh. His rediscovered memoir reads like the logbook of a restless traveller, torn between empire and identity, privilege and belonging. Writing aboard a ship to England, Singh looked back on a life of contradictions. His journey was not toward certainty, but toward dignity, with an invincible summer burning quietly within. 

Stay tuned!