Best of BS Opinion: Policy steadiness, job gaps, and creative loss

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

India’s economic framework has matured into a system built for resilience. At the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit, RBI Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta said the country’s ability to withstand global shocks rests on prudent macroeconomic reforms. Since the 1991 balance of payments crisis, India has avoided external turmoil through a flexible exchange rate regime, timely RBI interventions, and strong forex reserves that now exceed $700 billion. But Gupta noted that sustaining high growth will require more than sound fundamentals. As global trade faces uncertainty, India must push deeper structural reforms and use trade as a growth engine. 

India’s services sector tells a more uneven story. Contributing 55 per cent to gross value added and employing 188 million people, it has been a key growth driver. Yet, as new NITI Aayog reports reveal, the sector is split between high-value segments like IT, finance, and healthcare, and low-paying, informal services such as trade and education, highlights our second editorial. Nearly 87 per cent of workers lack formal protection, and the gender gap remains sharp as rural women’s participation in services is barely a sixth of men’s. Policy efforts now focus on formalising small enterprises, extending social security to gig and SME workers, skilling women, and developing smaller cities as service hubs. 

 

Kavita Rao notes that while service-sector jobs have grown, employment elasticity remains below 1, meaning output gains don’t translate fully into jobs. The sector’s 69 per cent informality and reliance on self-employment reflect deep structural issues. She argues for social protection as a public good rather than an employer burden, funded through a wider tax base, to encourage formalisation and resilience in an AI-driven future. 

Mihir Shah and Sunil Mani turn to the digital economy’s physical cost. India’s fast-growing data centre industry, concentrated along coasts like Mumbai and Chennai, consumes enormous water and energy resources, straining fragile ecosystems. They warn that unchecked growth could replicate crises seen in Ireland and Chile, where power shortages hit industrial hubs. To balance technology and ecology, they urge mandatory water audits, public disclosure of corporate footprints, and greater reliance on renewables and recycled cooling systems. 

Finally, Talmiz Ahmad reviews Radha Chadha’s The Maker of Filmmakers: How Jagat Murari and FTII Changed Indian Cinema Forever. Chadha revisits FTII’s formative years under Jagat Murari, who shaped generations of filmmakers and redefined cinematic education. Drawing on archives and interviews, she charts how Murari built the institute’s creative ethos before bureaucratic drift and politics took hold. Beyond a biography, the book doubles as a meditation on how vision, leadership, and institutional autonomy can mould culture and how their absence can undo it. 

Stay tuned!