Best of BS Opinion: Stock exchange closing auction system needs review

The day's opinion highlights flaws in closing auctions, the funding challenge in digital payments, humane KYC, cognitive warfare and everyday gender discrimination

Hello, and welcome to the Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day's Opinion page. 

 

The new closing auction session (CAS), introduced to improve price discovery for futures and options stocks, has yet to deliver the stability and fairness it promised. Sharp divergences in closing prices across exchanges and increased volatility have unsettled market participants, raising concerns about liquidity and market readiness. While wider participation from institutional and other investors could help the mechanism mature over time, today's first editorial cautions that regulators should remain open to revisiting the framework if it continues to produce distortions. Efficient price discovery is critical, and reforms should not come at the expense of market confidence or investors' legitimate interests. 

 

 

India's digital payments ecosystem has delivered remarkable scale and convenience, but its long-term sustainability is increasingly in question under the zero-merchant discount rate regime, notes the second editorial. As transaction volumes continue to surge, banks and payment providers face mounting costs of maintaining and expanding the infrastructure, with government support covering only a fraction of these expenses. The editorial contends that a calibrated merchant discount rate on large-value transactions could provide a durable funding model without burdening most users. Such an approach would also encourage greater competition among payment providers while ensuring continued investment in the country's digital payments infrastructure.

 

Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements are essential to protecting the financial system from fraud, money laundering and other illicit activity, but their implementation often creates avoidable hardship for genuine customers. Minor discrepancies, repeated documentation requests and rigid processes can undermine confidence without improving risk management. Swaminathan J explains that effective KYC depends on sound judgement rather than mechanical compliance, arguing that banks should adopt a proportionate, risk-based approach that combines regulatory rigour with empathy, ensuring KYC safeguards both financial integrity and customer convenience.

 

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and social media algorithms is transforming information warfare into cognitive warfare, where the objective is no longer simply to spread falsehoods but to shape perception and erode public judgement. Amplifying existing social divisions, rather than inventing new ones, has become a more effective way to weaken trust in institutions and shared reality. Ajay Kumar explores how AI-driven influence operations are becoming increasingly personalised and adaptive, arguing that societies must build cognitive resilience through media literacy, trusted communication and informed citizenship to safeguard democratic decision-making and national security in the digital age.

 

A new collection of essays, edited by Priyadarshini Bhattacharya, examines the subtle, everyday forms of gender discrimination and violence that often escape public attention, bringing together personal essays from voices across public life, including cinema, sports, policing, academia and public policy. In Ashes to Light: Stories of Hope Towards Gender Justice, the contributors explore how patriarchal norms shape women's identities, health, work, mobility and access to public spaces, while also highlighting resilience and the pursuit of change. In her review of the anthology, Neha Kirpal notes that its strength lies in revealing how deeply embedded gender bias remains in ordinary experiences. The collection ultimately calls for greater awareness, empathy and action to advance gender justice.