Best of BS Opinion: Air quality crisis, corporate results, and more

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

It is no coincidence that four of the world’s five most polluted cities are in the Indo-Gangetic plain and the causes can be traced to man-made acts, principally crop-stubble burning. How to tackle it is the subject of the opinion page columns today, writes Kanika Datta in this summing up of today’s views. 
 

The spike in post-monsoon pollution in north India can be traced to laws passed by the Punjab and Haryana government in 2009 that set off a surge in stubble burning. These laws urgently need to be repealed, say Ayush Patnaik and Ajay Shah here. 
 

Sunita Narain argues here that paying farmers not to burn stubble has proven to be a perverse incentive. Instead, she suggests the policy of subsidising farmers to acquire machines to till biomass into the soil and paying farmers for straw, which can be used for compressed bio-gas, are two useful ways of tackling the problem.
 

Other views examine corporate results, the housing finance market and the problems with digital schooling.

A preliminary look at the corporate results of listed companies suggests that the second quarter of FY21 did see the start of an economic revival, says the top edit. Read it here

Tamal Bandyopadhyay suggests a couple of things the Reserve Bank of India should do to bolster the steps it has taken to attract home buyers and encourage housing finance companies. Read it here
 

The latest Annual State of Education, or ASER, report has important pointers for online schooling, the second edit says. Read it here

QUOTE OF THE DAY

‘I would never accept that the cartoons justify violence.... I will always defend in my country the freedom to say, to write, to think, to draw’

French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview to Al Jazeera