Best of BS Opinion: Global trade, youth revolts, and Kashmir's echo

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

Sometimes joy feels like a trick of the mind, like spotting a familiar face in a crowd only to realise it’s a stranger, or mistaking the shimmer on a road for a pool of water. Joy, in those moments, is a hallucination: it looks real, it feels tangible, but it dissolves when you try to hold it. It can appear in diplomacy, and even erupt in protests. That sense of fleeting delight, followed by a return to harder realities, threads through the hallucinatory spectrum that is the world today. Let’s dive in. 

Trade ties between India and the US reflect this mirage. Hopes of stability rose when President Donald Trump spoke of dialogue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but Washington’s action told another story. By imposing a 50 per cent tariff linked to Russian crude, while sparing China, it jeopardises India’s labour-intensive exports, highlights our first editorial. The illusion of security fades as firms brace for lost orders and jobs, forcing the government to consider urgent support. 

 

Meanwhile, in Nepal, the government’s ban on 26 social media platforms, from WhatsApp to Instagram, briefly stirred the sense of a generational uprising. Yet the protests turned violent, leaving 20 dead and forcing the resignation of Khadga Prasad Oli. With an interim leader backed by the army and new figures like Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah emerging, the hallucination of swift change collides with entrenched power and an economy still reliant on remittances. Read our second editorial for more. 

M S Sahoo and CKG Nair describe how the sale of Air India to Tata revealed the “lemon-plus problem” – rescues shaped as much by cultural baggage as by balance sheets. Under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, rescue values diverge from liquidation numbers because morale, legacy and governance tilt outcomes. Revival, they argue, falters if these intangible burdens remain unaddressed. 

Ajay Kumar writes that India’s new Rs 1 trillion Research, Development and Innovation scheme risks becoming another hallucination without procurement reform. Rigid rules discourage single-vendor innovations despite allowances in law. Global models offer templates, but unless India adapts its frameworks, the promise of innovation-driven growth may dissolve. 

Finally, Neha Kirpal reviews Ipsita Chakravarty’s Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict, where myths, rumours, songs and protest raps capture how ‘zulm’ and resistance reshape daily life. In a place where “there are no facts, only versions,” storytelling itself becomes a fragile hallucination of memory and truth. 

Stay tuned!