Best of BS Opinion: The making of power, art, and equality in 2025

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

They say mountains are shaped by patience, not by landslides. The earth doesn’t heave up greatness overnight, it endures the long grind of wind, rain, and time. But our times are obsessed with shortcuts: a handshake posing as diplomacy, a slogan standing in for governance, a sequel pretending to be art. If you listen closely, you can still hear the slow rumble of something sturdier being built beneath the surface. The columns today, in their own way, remind us that what truly endures in politics, in art, in governance, or in sport, is born of persistence, not eruption. Let’s dive in. 

 

Take Joseph E Stiglitz’s account of the “Turnberry trade” tango, a spectacle of showmanship masquerading as statecraft. The US and EU may have met on Scottish soil to script a “deal,” but what emerged was more a landslide of optics than a mountain of meaning. Europe, despite its economic heft, appeared to kneel to Washington’s whim. Stiglitz warns that if Europe keeps giving way to short-term tremors, it risks eroding the very bedrock of democracy and fair trade that once made it a summit of postwar ideals. 

Back home, Aditi Phadnis reminds us that political mountains, too, are carved in the first term, not the fifth. Nitish Kumar’s governance between 2005 and 2010, Jyoti Basu’s land reforms in Bengal, Naidu’s early tech vision in Andhra, these were not dramatic landslides of charisma but slow, deliberate ascents of administration. Caste may open the door, Phadnis writes, but it’s competence that keeps it open. The peaks that last in Indian politics are built brick by brick. 

And Shekhar Gupta’s column shows how the moral terrain of the nation still cracks under the same old fault lines. From the shoe hurled at a Dalit Chief Justice to the suicide of a senior IPS officer, and the quiet triumph of Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound, the fractures of caste and faith remain raw. Gupta ties these together arguing that while policy can patch the surface, prejudice lies deep in the rock. The empathy sparked by Homebound is a small landslide of awareness, but the mountain of equality still awaits shaping. 

Meanwhile, Sandeep Goyal turns to Bollywood, where studios chasing fast gains, mistook sequels for summits. 2025’s box office has been littered with the rubble of failed franchises. Only Raid 2 climbed high while the rest collapsed under the weight of repetition. It’s proof that formulaic confidence isn’t the same as creative altitude and that storytelling, like geology, resists shortcuts. 

Finally, in the roaring world of Formula 1, Ayushi Singh finds that even when machines rule, the human pulse still refuses automation. Algorithms can simulate perfection, but not courage. Verstappen’s rain-soaked miracle in Sao Paulo (from 17th to first) wasn’t calculated but carved in instinct. Technology may predict outcomes, but it cannot model defiance. The race, like the mountain, still belongs to those who endure the climb. 

Stay tuned!