Best of BS Opinion: The bars appear full but the network's still lagging

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

There’s a peculiar kind of frustration in watching those four glowing bars on your phone while the page you want to look at in your chrome stubbornly refuses to load. You’ve got signal, you’ve got speed but nothing’s moving. It’s a strangely modern metaphor for power without transmission, structure without connection, progress without pulse. Much like the times we live in when the indicators all seem strong, yet something in the invisible circuitry keeps lagging. Let’s dive in. 

Bond markets, for instance, are flashing full strength but buffering on delivery. Despite the RBI’s 100-basis-point rate cuts and a generous infusion of liquidity, yields on 10-year government bonds are refusing to ease. Investors want higher returns, auctions are being cancelled, and the central bank’s efforts to transmit policy into cheaper borrowing costs have hit a wall of market scepticism, observes our first editorial. The Centre’s next moves on fiscal consolidation will decide whether those bars finally start moving again or keep blinking in vain. 

Elsewhere, India’s Artificial Intelligence Governance Guidelines promise to put the country in control of its own digital network. Framed around seven pillars, from trust to accountability, they seek to balance innovation and restraint, notes our second editorial. Yet as the ministry admits, these guidelines are voluntary and without corporate responsibility or robust data governance, India’s AI future risks being another connection that looks strong but keeps dropping packets of trust. 

On the fiscal front, as M Govinda Rao writes, the upcoming Budget 2026-27 must keep the economy’s signals stable amid global static. With growth projected at 6.8 per cent and capital spending running ahead of schedule, India’s fundamentals look solid. But investment ratios remain frozen and subsidy pressures loom large. The government must walk the tightrope between fiscal discipline and growth support because high bars on GDP mean little if private investment refuses to connect. 

And while technology redefines every profession, Kanika Datta reminds us how disruption in the newsroom mirrors that paradox. The tools are smarter than ever, but the heart of journalism: intuition, curiosity, human texture, doesn’t run on algorithms. AI may soon write perfect sentences, but it can’t yet ask imperfect, necessary questions. The bars are full but the internet, not quite. 

Finally, Chittajit Mitra’s review of The Cell and the Soul by Anand Teltumbde captures perhaps the most profound version of this theme: the human spirit’s connectivity in confinement. From Taloja Jail, Teltumbde writes of how injustice thrives in silence, of how truth often finds no network to travel through. Yet even behind bars, his voice transmits, proof that sometimes, even with no signal, the message still gets through. 

Stay tuned!