Best of BS Opinion: Railway privatisation, India-China clash, and more

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

The disengagement between Chinese and Indian forces at Galwan suggests that the Chinese strategy of creating facts on the ground and negotiating from that position seems to be working again, says the lead edit today. The key lesson from this latest skirmish is the criticality of India’s battle readiness and alertness of its security forces to safeguard territorial integrity rather than relying on personal diplomacy. Read the assessment of the post-Galwan agreement here. But the rise of Chinese irredentism has wider implications, says former foreign secretary Shyam Saran. “If Asia does become a Chinese dominated space, it is not only because India failed to get its economic act together but also because it did not stand up for its democratic credentials. The future of democracy in Asia and the world may well be determined by choices India makes, he writes here. Elsewhere, writers examine the fate of artificial intelligence and the impending privatisation of train services. Kanika Datta sums up the views.

Both the government and companies are focused on AI applications, not research and development, which leaves India vulnerable to techno-colonialism, says Prosenjit Datta. Read it here

The second edit explains why the privatisation of train services is on the wrong track. Read it here

QUOTE OF THE DAY

America’s defeat at the hands of the coronavirus didn’t happen because victory was impossible. No, we lost because Trump and those around him decided that it was in their political interests to let the virus run wild

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in the New York Times