Best of BS Opinion: How policies, markets and culture leave their mark

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

Anyone who has ever used a fountain pen knows the quiet suspense that comes with each stroke. Sometimes the lines glide smooth and precise, while other times the nib releases more ink than intended, leaving a blot that alters the page forever. Our world unfolds in much the same way with moments of control and clarity but also interrupted by smears of excess or unpredictability. From global markets and governance to laws, geopolitics and cinema, each leaves its own mark, sometimes elegant, sometimes unruly, yet all part of the same written record. Let’s dive in. 

In the United States, Jonathan Levin writes of an economy once called the envy of the world, now muddling along with smudges instead of clarity. American equities are up 9.6 per cent this year, but the world outside is racing ahead. Tariffs, weak payroll growth and a slumping dollar have stained the Fed’s page with uncertainty, while Trump’s pressure adds more blots. America hasn’t collapsed, but its handwriting is shakier, no longer the bold script it once was. 

 

India, meanwhile, struggles with its own bureaucratic ink stains. R Gopalakrishnan argues that terms like rajya and sarkar still frame governance as rule rather than service, leaving citizens exposed while the state remains opaque. From voter lists in Bihar to Aadhaar renewals, red tape drips like excess ink across the margins of everyday life. Unless the pen is held differently, treating citizens as partners, aligning Centre and states, and shifting from rajya to jana seva, the page will keep blotting instead of turning crisp. 

Devangshu Datta sees a similar overcorrection in India’s Online Gaming Bill, which will wipe billions in value and 20,000 jobs with one sweep. Like Soviet bans on card games that only fuelled smuggling, India’s ink stroke may drive gamers underground, towards crypto and the Dark Web. The instinct to gamble cannot be erased; the more the law presses, the more it leaks into new forms. 

Global politics, too, carries ink stains. Shekhar Gupta observes that in the Oval Office, European leaders sat before Donald Trump like chastened students, conceding to terms that strengthen Putin. Europe’s pragmatism, however, shows how to write through the blotches with realism, not emotion, and with lessons for India on military strength, neighbourly calm and pragmatic diplomacy. 

And then there is Sholay. Atanu Biswas reminds us that Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 masterpiece remains a script whose ink has never dried. Attempts at remakes, from Aag to animations, have only smudged the page further. Perhaps that is the lesson that some words, once written, resist rewriting. 

Stay tuned!