Best of BS Opinion: India must push ahead on reforms agenda

Today's BS Opinion examines India's regulatory hurdles, the NEET-UG crisis, rising fiscal stress from welfare promises, corporate governance failures, and China under Xi Jinping

Hello, and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day's Opinion page.  NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba earlier this week noted that India's famed 1991 reforms dismantled industrial licensing but not the regulatory framework underpinning it. As our first editorial points out, it is still notoriously hard to be an entrepreneur in India, thanks to the infamous 'Licence Raj'. Domestic firms continue to be reluctant to invest, likely because the much-touted 'ease of doing business' is anything but, thanks to differences between the Centre and states in terms of regulations. To build a vibrant business environment, India needs clear policy formulations and seamless clearances. Knee-jerk responses like asking people to not buy gold and hiking import duties on precious metals not only hurt businesses but also signal that the government can actively hamper their prospects. “Permitted unless prohibited” will be the right approach.  The cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 exams for admission to medical colleges after allegations of a paper leak points to an institutional crisis in how national entrance examinations are held, says our second editorial. Set up as an autonomous, professional testing body to create a transparent and scientific examination ecosystem, the National Testing Agency has increasingly found itself linked to paper leaks, glitches, late results, and logistical confusion. This is painful not just for students, but also their families, given the high stakes in such examinations. Policymakers must address whether such examinations - which attract enormous numbers of students nationwide - are administratively sustainable without matching institutional capacity. It may be time to restructure the NTA at an institutional level and implement the recommendations of the K Radhakrishnan Committee set up to examine the examination system itself.  M Govinda Rao argues that India’s newly-elected state governments now face the hard work of financing expansive - and expensive - pre-poll welfare promises. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal already carry heavy debt burdens, high revenue deficits, and mounting interest costs, leaving little room for such freebies without endangering the state's fiscal health. Notwithstanding, parties have promised generous cash transfers, subsidies, and free services, irrespective of their political positions. Rao warns that such populism risks crowding out long-term capital investment that would enable human empowerment, while the West Asia conflict could further strain revenues, energy prices, and fiscal stability across states.  In her SWOT column, Kanika Datta argues that India’s recurring corporate scandals reveal a critical gap between entrepreneurial ambition and governance standards. From Paytm and Kingfisher Airlines to IL&FS, Ranbaxy, and Byju's, she points out that weak board oversight and regulatory lapses have repeatedly allowed risks to accumulate unchecked until it was too late. High-profile directors and strong reputations often failed to prevent governance breakdowns, as with Satyam, while regulators have often been slow to respond despite flashing red lights. Such episodes go beyond individual companies, because they inflict global reputation damage, reinforcing  the perception that corporate governance remains the soft underbelly of India’s private sector.  In this review, Gunjan Singh describes China Under Xi Jinping: An Interdisciplinary Assessment, edited by Michal Dahl, Maciej Szatkowski, and Hanna Kupś, as a detailed examination of how that country's president has reshaped its political, ideological, and foreign-policy direction. The book argues that Xi has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s caution in favour of a more assertive nationalism centred on party control, anti-corruption drives, and tighter ideological conformity. The book's essays explore Beijing’s weakening soft power, expanding surveillance of religion and language, and the use of political humour as coded dissent. Singh praises the breadth of the analysis, while noting limited treatment of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong - all of which have seen dissent stifled - and broader geopolitical shifts.