Best of BS Opinion: When timing fails, even the best systems refuse to flip

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

Everyone who cooks knows this moment very well: the roti dough is shaped, resting on your palm, and you try to flip it before it hits the griddle. But if the dough is too moist, it stretches, sticks, and refuses to behave the way one wants. Flip too early and it tears or wait too long and it slumps like rubber. That awkward pause between intention and execution is where today’s writeups sit as well. Systems ready to move, but not quite dry enough to turn cleanly. Let’s dive in. 

That tension runs through the government’s latest push to rationalise centrally sponsored and central schemes. With 54 centrally sponsored schemes and roughly 260 central ones, the Finance Ministry’s call to merge overlaps is an admission that abundance can blur outcomes, highlights our first editorial. Designed in Delhi but partly funded by states, these schemes often leave state governments holding the dough, where they are expected to flip, fund and deliver with limited fiscal room. The case for review is not ideological but practical. Free up fiscal space, empower states and local bodies, but pair that freedom with tighter fiscal discipline so the dough holds its shape. 

 

Across the globe, the United States is attempting its own abrupt flip which is threatening to tear down everything. Donald Trump’s withdrawal from dozens of international organisations is driven by a belief that multilateralism dilutes sovereignty. But as the second editorial notes, this scepticism predates Trump, stretching from trade to climate. The danger now is not the act of pulling away, but what happens when the dough is dropped. Exiting climate bodies and UN-linked agencies weakens global coordination without replacing it, leaving a vacuum that China is structurally prepared to fill. 

Meanwhile, writing on regulation, Ajay Tyagi argues that India’s financial oversight suffers from a similar impatience. Instead of letting enforcement dry and strengthen, regulators keep adding fresh layers of rules. Monitoring, investigation and recovery remain underpowered while penalties are delayed, appeals drag on, and deterrence fades. Each market disruption prompts more regulation, not better follow-through, leaving the base weak and the flip predictably messy. 

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar takes us to a rare successful turn. Netflix, beginning with House of Cards, waited just long enough before flipping the global media model. Film-scale budgets, full-season drops and low subscription prices changed viewing habits, rewired Indian and global markets, and carried local stories to 200 countries. Here, the dough held and the chapati puffed really well. 

Finally, Gunjan Singh reviews Edward Wong’s At the Edge of Empire, a book about a system that never risks an early flip. Through family history and political reportage, Wong shows how Mao’s imprint lingers in Xi Jinping’s centralisation, nationalism and social control, suggesting continuity rather than rupture. The book’s unsettling insight is that this dough has been left to set for so long that it turns cleanly, but allows no room for reinvention once it hardens. 

Stay tuned!