Best of BS Opinion: When the engines roar but the wheels refuse to move

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

If you drive, you must have come across this situation at least once where there is this kind of strained acceleration where the dashboard blinks, the noise rises, but the tyres stay locked in place. The road shimmers in the sun, your foot pressing harder on the accelerator, the RPM needle climbing as if preparing for flight, and yet the car refuses to move. That restless energy, that sense of systems pushing, humming, and straining without translating force into momentum, ties together our writeups for today. It feels like a time where effort is unmistakable, the outcomes appear uncertain, and the distance left to travel is painfully long. Let’s dive in. 

Take inflation, where the RBI’s dashboard is flashing green even as growth gauges resist smooth acceleration. October’s CPI at 0.25 per cent should, in theory, let the MPC downshift comfortably. Yet, as our first editorial notes, despite favourable monsoons and the possibility of gentler prices ahead, the central bank still feels like that revving engine, having already cut 100 basis points this year. Strong GDP numbers keep the gears tight, even as the rupee and foreign inflows wait to see whether any more easing provides thrust or merely wheelspin. 

Children’s welfare shows an even starker version: vast policy horsepower but extremely limited traction. As our second editorial highlights, 206 million Indian children face at least one deprivation and 62 million face many more, as budgets stagnate and Anganwadi upgrades crawl. Unicef calls for structural reform, Kerala shows what community-led innovation can do, yet nationwide progress remains caught between high aspiration and insufficient grip on ground realities. 

The global trade churn, Amita Batra writes, follows the same pattern. The US has unleashed a blizzard of executive-order trade agreements with countries from Malaysia to Switzerland which are impressive in speed but uncertain in longevity. Partners have squeezed in protections, from tariff caps to semiconductor parity, yet the deals remain revisable, unstable and dependent on what the Supreme Court decides about presidential tariff powers. The machinery there is moving fast but the road ahead shifts faster. 

Meanwhile, Rajesh Kumar’s analysis of women-focused cash transfers in India shows another case of acceleration without control. Schemes are expanding rapidly across states, promising opportunity but colliding with rising debt levels, fragile revenues and the political temptation to announce benefits right before elections. The engine is roaring loudly but the fiscal ground reality is also holding firm, thus the development EV moves nowhere. 

Even personal finance mirrors this sensation. Sanjay Kumar Singh reviews Morgan Housel’s new book The Art of Spending Money, which talks about how much of modern spending is a rush of noise with quick bursts of satisfaction, faster fading returns, and constant acceleration toward possessions that rarely deliver meaning. Contentment, Housel argues, comes only when the wheels finally grip, when people align money with purpose, not showoff. 

Stay tuned!