Best of BS Opinion: India's ambitions and the cape it keeps tripping on

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

We all have seen superhero movies with the caped-crusaders out there to save the world just in the nick of time. But as we grew up, we started asking questions about the need of long capes, the moral calls they make, who they are really saving etc. Watching them mid-flight with cape fluttering, chest out, eyes blazing with intent, we’ve all wondered (sometimes even a bit sadistically): what if they get tangled and tumble spectacularly over the very cape meant to make them soar. Sometimes, our country feels like that superhero too: dazzling in ambition, explosive with promise, yet forever entangled in its own loose threads. The result is a nation constantly rescuing itself from its own near-misses. Heroic, yes, but often heartbreakingly avoidable. Let’s dive in. 

 

Take, for instance, the latest blow to India’s “pharmacy to the world” image. Fourteen children died after consuming toxic cough syrup laced with industrial solvents, the same chemicals that caused deaths in The Gambia and Uzbekistan earlier. As our first editorial notes, the tragedy exposes chronic lapses in drug regulation. Safeguards apply to exports, but not domestic batches, leaving India’s own markets exposed. It’s a system that keeps leaping before it looks and thus falling for the same reason. 

That same mix of ambition and amnesia runs through the government’s Rs 11,440 crore Mission for Atmanirbharta in Pulses. As our second editorial highlights, the plan is both visionary and overdue to make India self-reliant in pulses, fix yields that lag behind Ethiopia’s, and plug a looming demand gap. Yet the mission’s success hinges not on grand schemes but grounded execution from post-harvest storage to timely procurement. Pulses enrich the soil, save water, and could fortify India’s food security but only if the superhero, cape in hand, learns to tie his shoelaces first. 

Then there’s the story of engineers and policymakers, brought alive by T N Ninan, who contrasts China’s technocratic governance with India’s generalist bureaucracy. China built bridges, railways, and chip foundries under leaders who thought like engineers. India, by contrast, is still run mostly by lawyers and accountants. When engineers do rise, from Sreedharan to Nilekani, they build systems that work. Perhaps what India needs is not just more heroes, but ones trained to calculate trajectory before taking flight. 

And down south, Shishir Gupta and Rishita Sachdeva write about Bengaluru, a city that once soared as India’s tech metropolis but now teeters under its own success. Congested roads, parched taps, and absent governance have turned the “Silicon Valley of India” into a cautionary tale. The technologically talented caped-crusaders from around the world may still flock here, but how long before they too trip over the city’s potholes? 

Finally, in Winning with AI:Your Guide to AI Literacy, reviewed by Chintan Girish Modi, Jaspreet Bindra and Anuj Magazine make a plea for clarity amid the chaos, that understanding AI is like learning a new language, one that can turn confusion into competence. It’s the superhero’s manual for staying upright in a fast-changing world. Know your tools, know your limits, and don’t trip over your own genius. 

Stay tuned!