Best of BS Opinion: Tracking shifts in judiciary, trade, and policy

Business Standard

15-05-2025

On some winter mornings, the fog hangs low, heavy, and indifferent, so thick it swallows outlines and makes familiar paths feel eerily new. You know the road is there, the gate, the turn, the waiting tea vendor, but they disappear into the blur. So, what do you do? You light a lantern. Not to banish the fog, but to move through it. Slowly. Deliberately. That's what today's stories feel like, each one a small but stubborn light in the haze of complexity, delay, or transition. Let's dive in.
Take the elevation of Justice Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai as the 52nd Chief Justice of India. He becomes only the second Dalit to reach this post, a milestone of representation in a system often criticised for its opacity and imbalance, notes our first editorial. His six-month term probably won't clear the backlog of over 80,000 cases or instantly fix the judiciary's trust deficit but his vow to steer clear of post-retirement rewards is a moral lantern, lighting up a path where judges stand apart, not beholden.
In climate policy too, the fog is thick. The government's plan to add a 'sustainable transport' mission to its climate change agenda sounds promising, highlights our second editorial. But scratch the surface, and you're lost in contradictions, charging stations powered by coal, EV adoption stalling, and road freight refusing to yield. Still, setting stricter norms like Bharat VII and planning millions of clean-energy charging stations signal direction. Not a revolution, but something nonetheless.
Meanwhile, M S Sahoo's column dissects the Bhushan Power case, where a long-settled resolution was undone six years later, without consequence to those responsible. It's not just a legal curiosity, it exposes a system where decisions are made in fog and reversed with no warning. His call for finality, speed, and economic coherence in the insolvency process is not a cry into the void, but a call for justice to be visible and reliable.
In a shifting world economy, Amrit Amirapu and Arvind Subramanian argue that even as old models of industrial growth fade, manufacturing still offers the clearest light for the world's poorest. It's not a floodlight, but a torch — scalable, inclusive, imperfect that shows enough of the road ahead to keep moving.
And in his review of India-Africa: Building Synergies In Peace, Security And Development by Ruchita Beri, Dammu Ravi reflects on India's evolving partnership with Africa. The continent is no longer just a recipient of help, it's a force finding its own way. India's role? Not to lead with certainty, but to walk alongside, lighting lanterns of health, education, energy, and trade across a vast and often invisible terrain.