Best of BS Opinion: India needs to fix its many governance failures

Today's BS Opinion examines the NEET-UG paper leak, the delayed AI171 crash report, creditor rights under the IBC, urban safety failures and a global history of caste

Hello, and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day's Opinion page.  The government’s temporary block on Telegram ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination misidentifies the source of the problem. The paper leak originated from governance failures within the National Testing Agency, where individuals with authorised access allegedly compromised examination integrity, rather than from the messaging platform itself. Invoking legal provisions to restrict Telegram risks treating distribution channels as the cause while leaving structural weaknesses untouched, writes our first editorial. Given that authorities have identified those responsible and warned students against fraudulent claims, the editorial contends that reforming oversight, tightening safeguards, and addressing links with coaching networks should take priority over platform bans. 

 

  Today's second editorial argues that the continued absence of a final report on the Air India AI171 crash, one year after the disaster, is deepening uncertainty and denying closure to affected families. While investigations into complex aviation accidents require time, greater transparency about the inquiry’s progress is necessary. Preliminary findings pointing to fuel-control switch movement, without definitive attribution or full cockpit transcripts, have encouraged competing theories and public speculation. With international norms favouring either a final report or an interim update within a year, authorities must release conclusive findings promptly to strengthen accountability and improve aviation safety. 

  M S Sahoo and Raghav Pandey argue that a decade of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has entrenched an unjust hierarchy that sidelines operational creditors in favour of financial creditors. They contend that legal changes and judicial deference to creditors’ commercial wisdom have enabled lenders to control both insolvency outcomes and the distribution of proceeds, creating an inherent conflict of interest. The authors reject the economic and constitutional rationale for this distinction, arguing that suppliers, who are mostly small and medium enterprises, also assess risk and create value. International practice, they note, grants operational creditors greater participation, making India’s framework unusually exclusionary.  The fatal Hauz Rani fire, nearly three decades after the Uphaar disaster, exposes not isolated failures but a persistent model of unsafe urban growth, writes Amit Kapoor. Drawing on his family’s personal loss in the Uphaar tragedy, he contends that India’s cities routinely prioritise density, speed, and rent extraction over safety and dignity. Informality, thus, is not an accident but an accepted mode of urban planning that leaves vulnerable residents with unsafe choices. Administrative responses remain reactive rather than preventive. Lasting change requires civic accountability and a renewed demand for liveable, lawful cities but it would appear Indian society has collectively lost its sense of morality as well as its powers of protest. 

In his review of Suraj Milind Yengde's Caste: A Global Story, Amritesh Mukherjee says the book is an ambitious account of how caste adapts across geography, class, and modern institutions rather than dissolving with migration. The book argues that caste survives not through inertia but through reinvention, whether in diaspora communities, colonial categorisation, diplomatic practice, or contemporary social life. It challenges both conservative and progressive traditions for overlooking caste’s persistence and complexity. At the same time, it foregrounds histories of Dalit resistance, showing how anti-caste movements have evolved globally to contest exclusion and build new solidarities.