Best of BS Opinion: Misplaced priorities, discovery of Pakistan, and more

Business Standard brings to you best of BS Opinion for the day.

Top talking heads of the finance ministry, along with Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman, addressed the media on Friday, highlighting the steps taken by the government over the last few months to push economic growth. While the sharp deceleration in growth is a matter of concern, what is worrying is that the government is focusing its energy on politically controversial issues, which could negatively affect economic activity in the medium term.

Business Standard Opinion pieces for the day talk about government’s misplaced priorities, among other things.  

The BJP’s push for political dominance and rewriting the rules of engagement represents a serious misplacement of priorities in these circumstances, and may be impossible to pull off, writes T N Ninan

India serves itself poorly with its latter-day discovery of Pakistan as an instrument in domestic politics. For comparisons with Pakistan now, India will need to stoop so low that our knees would hurt, writes Shekhar Gupta

From a purely legal and constitutional point of view, the new citizenship law is fine. But from a preferences point of view, it comes up short. The subject of preferences problem and their ordering have been studied threadbare by economic theorists over the last 125 years, writes TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan

 Quote
 

“I am not willing to discuss as to where the economy stands. I am interested in working towards improving things.”
 

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman