Best of BS Opinion: Fragile power and rising risk in geopolitics and policy

Business Standard

9 hours ago

A loaded gun in a trembling hand, that's what anxiety looks like, sometimes. Like a loud bang waiting to go off in a quiet room. The instability and ready to harm triggers capture the volatility of our current moment. Power, when unanchored by accountability or foresight, ceases to be a stabilising force and becomes a threat in itself. Across geopolitics, technology, tax reform, and economic theory, decisions are increasingly driven by impulse rather than strategy, amplifying the risks of miscalculation and unintended consequences. Let's dive in.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the United States' sudden bombing of Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. Using stealth bombers and bunker-busting weapons, the Trump administration bypassed international consensus and strategic restraint. As our first editorial warns, such unilateral action may not delay Iran's nuclear ambitions but accelerate them, pushing more nations to believe that only weapons guarantee security.
In the tech world, a different kind of arms race is underway. The scramble for AI talent has become frenzied, with top companies offering astronomical salaries to a scarce pool of researchers. Despite soaring innovation, the entire sector rests on a fragile foundation of overstrained human capital, as our second editorial outlines. The very systems designed to bring control and predictability are themselves dependent on an unstable and overstretched workforce.
That fragility extends to India's development ambitions as well. Nitin Desai shows how the country's long-term economic goals risk being derailed by chronic underinvestment in R&D. Without structural change and targeted support, India's journey to becoming a high-income nation could stall, its potential energy left dangerously untapped.
V S Krishnan argues that GST, though stabilised after eight years, still lacks the coherence needed for inclusive growth. His proposed reforms aim to simplify the tax system and align it with employment and equity goals, but like all fiscal overhauls, the challenge lies in execution, steady hands in a charged environment.
Finally, Sanjeev Ahluwalia's review of Ray Dalio's How Countries Go Broke reminds us that macroeconomic collapse rarely arrives all at once. It builds gradually, through political missteps, ignored debt cycles, and overconfidence, a trembling hand gripping levers of power for too long.
Stay tuned!