Best of BS Opinion: The politics of protest, power, and punchlines

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

Have you ever built a tower out of trump cards? Once on a slow Sunday afternoon, the kind where time feels like soft clay, I stacked them carefully — queens and kings, aces and jokers — believing that a good strategy and steady hands would hold it all together. I was close to putting the last two cards together, the jewel of my tower. But then, somebody came and turned on the fan. The wind was not a storm, just a small ripple of air which began from the speeding blades. And down it all went. All that planning, lost to a moment. Today’s stories feel similar. Let’s dive in. 

 

That’s the metaphor Karishma Vaswani leans into in her critique of America’s shifting trade stance in Asia. The US, long seen as the anchor of open trade and alliances in the region, is now building tariff walls so high they risk toppling the fragile balance of power. Trump’s aggressive stance against China might have merit, but dragging in allies like Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam? That gust might just scatter America’s Indo-Pacific influence, as China sweeps in with smoother, stickier diplomacy and tariff-free charm. 

Closer home, Aditi Phadnis revisits the life of M A Baby, CPI(M)’s cerebral warhorse who once dared to argue that Jyoti Basu should’ve been PM. His career has been a mix of conviction and quiet collapse — standing tall for parliamentary communism one day, and watching his party shrink in relevance the next. Now, as he leads a party splintered by geography, caste anxieties, and ageing ideologues, he must try to steady a house that’s been wobbling for years. 

Meanwhile, the anti-MAGA movement, as Sandeep Goyal writes, is also a rebellion built on symbols — T-shirts, parody hats, and resistance merch trying to mock a red-hat empire. It’s witty, potent, and growing. But Trump’s movement is rooted, organised, and unshaken. Right now, the ridicule is strong, but the structure remains his. 

And as global giants lock horns, India must dance between diplomacy and danger. Shekhar Gupta decodes how New Delhi walks the razor’s edge without getting trampled. 

And what about the architects of humour themselves? In today’s Eye Culture, Atanu Biswas examines today’s comedians who, like medieval jesters, once enjoyed symbolic immunity but now navigate a minefield of legal lines and public outrage. As Biswas puts it, a wise comedian must balance truth and tragedy, or else risk being nothing more than a disposable joker. 

Stay tuned!