Best of BS Opinion: It's time to stop ghosting your own potential

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

There’s a haunted house we all heard about during our childhood, the one at the end of the lane that everyone swore was cursed. We’d dare each other to step inside, but never really did. As it turns out, we all grew up and built our own versions of it, the invisible ones, those inside our heads. It’s where our half-lived dreams live, where bold ideas wait in the attic, where every “maybe later” becomes another ghost. But today, our writeups are about people and institutions who are finally stopping to do that. They are picking up the call, answering their own possibilities, and rewriting their destinies. Let’s dive in. 

 

Take LG Electronics India. Once just another multinational selling home appliances, it’s now the poster child of confidence, notes our first editorial. Its stock listing soared over 50 per cent from issue price, a debut that says India is no longer the market MNCs tiptoe through. Once upon a time, the government chased Coca-Cola and IBM out. Now, it’s global giants queuing to get in. Even LG’s Indian arm now outshines its parent back in Seoul, proof that sometimes, potential just needs a stage big enough to see itself in full light. 

And then there’s Google, or rather, Alphabet, which just swiped right on India’s digital future. Its $15-billion AI and cloud hub in Visakhapatnam, the biggest outside the US, isn’t just infrastructure but an imagination on fibre optic cables. It’s India’s invitation to the world: come build your future here. Our second editorial highlights that with cheap data, bold policies, and digital talent in abundance, the country isn’t just catching up, it’s quietly becoming the place where AI comes to learn humility and scale. 

But as we celebrate ambition, we can’t ignore the ghosts that still linger. In India’s health system, the spirits of bureaucratic design still rattle their chains. As K P Krishnan writes, the health ministry remains “the umpire, the player, and the stadium owner,” a house of mirrors where regulators like CDSCO and FSSAI operate without true autonomy. Until we untangle that, we risk mourning the same preventable tragedies again and again. 

Still, hope hums elsewhere. Vinayak Chatterjee’s take on the new Rs 1 trillion Urban Challenge Fund reads like a blueprint for cities that finally want to grow up. By demanding performance-based funding and innovation-led PPPs, it’s pushing municipalities to think like entrepreneurs. If done right, it could transform cities from passive dependents into active growth engines. No more ghosting urban ambition. 

And finally, Chintan Girish Modi reminds us through Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes To Me that the hardest potential to face is emotional. The courage to reconcile, to forgive, to write about wounds without turning them into weapons. Roy doesn’t ghost her pain, she converses with it, learns from it, and lets it grow into art. 

Stay tuned!