Best of BS Opinion: When the tents collapse and the beasts run free

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

In almost every circus, there is a moment when the painted elephants refuse their cues, the lions shrug off the whip, and the ticket tent catches fire. Suddenly, the circus ring-master is not performing but scrambling, his top hat useless against chaos. That is our moment currently. It is a circus where the animals have broken loose, rules and rings still painted on the ground but no one seems to be obeying them. The trapeze artist swings, unaware the net below has been removed, while the crowd keeps clapping, unsure whether this is a spectacle or catastrophe. Let’s dive in. 

India’s clean-energy push looks, in our first editorial, like a solar stallion galloping ahead without reins. Over half the country’s installed capacity is now non-fossil, but system readiness limps behind. We built arenas of panels without measuring their strength, leaving 129 GW of solar capacity without a national yardstick for output or degradation. Storage, the cage that keeps the animal from stampeding at dusk, is barely 5 GW against a 60 GW need. Land hurdles, weak grids, and overreliance on imported components are akin to the circus masters who forgot fences.  

The latest US National Security Strategy feels like another spooked creature loose. Reviving a Trump-era twist to the Monroe Doctrine, it prioritises the Western Hemisphere as its ring and urges Europe to rediscover civilisational purity while frowning on migration, observes our second editorial. In Asia, Washington pushes partners to shoulder burdens, but hints it could tolerate China dominating the region. For New Delhi, this is unsettling. When the ringmaster may walk away, allies must wonder whether to build new fences themselves. 

And A K Bhattacharya writes of civil aviation, where IndiGo’s meltdown was portrayed more as a rogue beast incident but reveals that the ringmasters were asleep. The airline expanded flights hoping rules would eventually bend. Meanwhile,  underpowered and undermanned regulators let a single carrier grow to 65 per cent share without blinking. Thousands of flights were cancelled, passengers stranded, while the DGCA still acted like a junior tent attendant rather than a statutory guardian. The animals did not rebel so much as discover no one was holding the rope. 

Meanwhile, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar turns to Hollywood, where Netflix, once the circus freak that reinvented entertainment, now panics as crowds thin. So it has set its eyes on Warner Brothers Discovery, offering $83 billion before Paramount leaps in with $108 billion. The elephants are rushing the gate, fuelled by fear and debt. Yet history suggests mega-mergers shred tents and trample value and it is culture, not money, that keeps performers aligned. 

Finally, Sneha Pathak reviews Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, where China and America run rival circuses. China performs feats at brutal speed, sometimes crushing acrobats under ambition, while America litigates until the act never starts. Wang does not romanticise either. China’s frenzy produced zero-Covid and human collateral, while America’s procedural paralysis hollowed production. He argues both must relearn control and balance: a tent where restraint protects, ambition builds and performers are not consumed.  

Stay tuned!