Best of BS Opinion: What shadows of power, policy and betrayal conceal

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

Imagine a velvet curtain swaying gently, drawing all eyes to it with its softness. It muffles the outside sound, softens the bright light, and promises intimacy and grandeur. But step closer and the weight of its fabric conceals something darker, the stark silhouette of the gallows, rope coiled, waiting. The paradox is unsettling. The curtain is beauty, comfort, even seduction, and yet its very purpose may be to hide an end. Politics, markets, diplomacy, even history often drape themselves this way, inviting touch while masking long-term discomfort. To stop at the velvet is to dream, to pull it back is to see the scaffold where illusions meet their reckoning. Let’s dive in. 

 

The new GST structure unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday brings a velvety curtain of simplification: Two rates of five and eighteen per cent, a 40 per cent slab for demerit goods, and an end to most cesses. Consumers and businesses are cheering at the sight of savings worth Rs 2.5 trillion. But behind that softness and comfort hangs the worry of state finances. Our first editorial points out that the government may eventually need to revisit the exemption list and also, perhaps, bring petroleum under the GST net. 

Across continents, another drape was pulled on Sunday. In London, Keir Starmer declared Britain’s recognition of Palestine, soon to be echoed by Emmanuel Macron and others. It feels like long-denied legitimacy, velvet to the touch of international justice. Yet Israel sees only the gallows. Benjamin Netanyahu, hardened by a Knesset resolution rejecting a two-state solution, condemned the act as rewarding terror. Our second editorial highlights that recognition may not change the ground realities, but it isolates Israel further, leaving it clutching at fraying American curtains. 

Markets wear velvet too. Artificial intelligence, writes Akash Prakash, has draped itself as the saviour of productivity, pulling capital and valuations into historic extremes. Nvidia is now as large as 15 per cent of US GDP in value. Yet this exuberance could hide the gallows of a sharp correction, especially for the Magnificent-7 and Asian tech-linked markets. India, though left out of the rally, could step through the curtain later, if it hastens growth reforms. 

Trade policy presents a similar paradox. Kirit S Parikh warns that Donald Trump’s tariff threats could choke India’s exports and spike its oil bill by $34 billion. Behind the velvet rhetoric of protecting American jobs lies the gallows of global inflation and Indian vulnerability. Parikh suggests India use targeted subsidies and, more crucially, reforms in logistics, tariffs, and compliance burdens to turn this coercion into opportunity. 

Finally, in Mujib’s Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing, reviewed by Hiranmay Karlekar, Manash Ghosh shows how Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s idealism and generosity of granting amnesty to war criminals, trusting repatriated officers, were the velvet curtain that hid the gallows of conspiracy and betrayal. His assassination in 1975 unleashed decades of coups, killings, and conspiracies that Bangladesh still reckons with. 

Stay tuned!