Best of BS Opinion: Power reforms, AI innovation, and India's future path

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

In every household tale, there’s always that warning: you have a golden goose, don’t kill it. The temptation is great , of free eggs today, endless riches tomorrow. But greed, neglect, or short-sightedness often ends the story badly. Lately, it has been becoming more and more apparent as to how this fable follows us into boardrooms, ministries, even our city streets. We are surrounded by golden geese: institutions, reforms, technologies, natural resources. Yet the question is whether we can nurture them with patience or squander them with quick fixes. Let’s dive in. 

Take India’s electricity sector. Reliable, affordable power is a golden goose for growth, but as our first editorial explains, our discoms are sinking under subsidies and losses despite decades of reform attempts. By 2022-23, they had piled up Rs 6.5 trillion in debt, an unsustainable burden. Cross-subsidies make industries uncompetitive, while new debt packages only defer the inevitable reckoning. Unless tariffs become transparent and states directly fund subsidies, this goose may stop laying altogether. 

 

The same logic applies to the promise of artificial intelligence. As the second editorial outlines, AI could add over half a trillion dollars to GDP by 2035. But without sovereign data infrastructure, balanced regulation, and massive reskilling, it risks displacing more workers than it empowers. Here, the goose is young and full of potential, but it needs careful feeding before it can lay golden eggs for all, not just a few. 

Meanwhile, cities too are facing their test, writes Amit Kapoor. Migration, floods, and cascading failures threaten urban futures, yet predictable climate finance and integrated planning can transform mobility into resilience. Ignore it, and we lose both the goose and the eggs. 

Some geese, though, have already proven their worth. M S Sahoo recalls how India’s leap into dematerialisation thirty years ago turned fragile paper certificates into the backbone of a modern market. The bold gamble not only saved a goose but multiplied its eggs into Rs 600 trillion worth of assets. 

And then there’s the book reviewed by Gunjan Singh: Decoding China: Hard Perspectives from India, edited by Ashok K Kantha. It reminds us that China too has nurtured its own geese of influence and power, sometimes with consequences that ruffle India’s feathers. For us, the lesson remains the same: protect what matters, reform what’s weak, and never, ever kill the golden goose. 

Stay tuned!