Best of BS Opinion: China's scientific muscle, sovereign rating risk & more

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

As the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic recedes, forecasters have begun lowering growth projections for the current fiscal year. The concurrent fiscal stress from lower economic growth can also put pressure on India’s sovereign rating. What would a sovereign rating downgrade mean for India? The second edit outlines the risks here
 

Other views today examine the political outlook for Narendra Modi’s, ways to pay for pandemic supplies and the implications of China’s space missions
 

The notion that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inept handling of the second wave of the pandemic marks the end of his political dominance is misplaced, Vir Sanghvi argues here
 

India urgently needs to import various medical supplies to deal with Covid-19. How to ramp up availability quickly given the governments’ limited finances? One part of the solution is make use of the Reserve Bank of India’s large reserves. Gurbachan Singh explains how this can be done here
 

As China put a new space station into orbit, and landed a rover on Mars, its technological advancement has global implications, says the top edit. Read it here

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Modi’s image will depend on how the mass suffering is interpreted, and whether he can successfully deploy his skills at narrative shifting, but I think he will have to pay a price”

Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Centre for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University in the US.