Best of BS Opinion: India at 79: A test of resilience, reform, reckoning

Business Standard

3 days ago

India's 79th Independence Day arrives as both a celebration and a stocktake. The unity that has defined the Republic has been tested repeatedly, most recently during Operation Sindoor, when India retaliated to a terror strike in Pahalgam by targeting Pakistan-based terror and military infrastructure. The response showcased a sharper counterterrorism posture, but the moment also underlines wider challenges, notes our first editorial. India's economic strength, the fastest-growing among large economies, has lifted millions out of poverty, yet the goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047 demands sustained growth in a tougher global climate.
Meanwhile, corporate governance is confronting its own reckoning. At the 2025 Annual Directors Conclave, Sebi chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey reminded independent directors they are not 'honorary appointees or friendly critics.' His warning follows the Gensol Engineering case. Similar failures at Satyam, IL&FS, Yes Bank, and Paytm Payments Bank have exposed a culture where promoter influence often overrides oversight, highlights our second editorial. With 549 voluntary resignations in FY25, including 154 this year, the environment for corporate oversight is shifting fast.
K P Krishnan writes on India's leading financial regulators, RBI, Sebi, and Irdai, which continue to be led by former IAS officers, reflecting a comfort with administrative experience but also an institutional shortfall. In mature economies, leadership is drawn from academia, industry, and public administration, bringing varied perspectives. India's absence of transparent, rule-based processes has made it harder for outsiders to thrive. Implementing reforms like those in the draft Indian Financial Code could open the field and create more resilient regulatory institutions.
Domestic institutional investors have overtaken foreign institutional investors in equity holdings for the first time in 25 years, with Rs 14 trillion in equities versus FIIs' Rs 10 trillion. Since 2014-15, DIIs have grown at an average 42 per cent annually, fuelled by retail participation and steady inflows. FIIs, once the dominant market movers, have seen their correlation with the Sensex fade, while DIIs now set the tone, argues Janak Raj. High valuations may keep foreign flows muted, leaving domestic money as the primary force in the market.
Finally, in To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban, reviewed by Elliot Ackerman, veteran correspondent Jon Lee Anderson follows Afghanistan's story from the Taliban's ouster in 2001 to their return in 2021. Drawing on two decades of frontline reporting, Anderson captures early optimism, mounting insurgency, and the missteps that shaped the war's outcome. The book closes with the lesson that withdrawing from reconstruction, as in the 1980s, can invite renewed instability, a warning with resonance far beyond Afghanistan.
Stay tuned!