Best of BS Opinion: Dealing with cyber-attacks, don't cut fuel taxes & more

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

The revelation that Chinese hackers knocked out Mumbai's power supply on October 23 last year should not have come as a surprise. Sino-Indian tensions had escalated, and cyber-attacks with tacit state sponsorship were a hi-tech dimension of power-projection. As our lead edit argues, the only real defence against attacks of this nature is the ability to credibly counter-attack. This leads to a mutual standoff, albeit one less devastating than nuclear posturing. The ability to retaliate has to be backed up by careful calibration, and the strategic courage to indulge in brinkmanship. This last quality may be difficult to acquire. But until it exists and is seen to exist, India’s cyberspace will remain vulnerable.
 

Given that retail owns 54 per cent of the free-float of small- and mid-caps, continuing retail inflows should help sustain the mid- and small-cap outperformance of the last six months at least in the short term, writes Neelkanth Mishra
 

Once the government gets back in the game of manipulating the price at the petrol pump to satisfy political considerations, it is a short step back to administered pricing — effectively reversing one of the most important reforms of recent years, notes our second editorial

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“When the tech-driven wealth creation reaches full potential, India could potentially beat the USA in terms of the number of billionaires.”

Hurun India's Managing Director Anas Rahman Junaid