Hello and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day’s editorial page.
The world is entering a broad demographic transition, with fertility falling below replacement levels across much of the globe and populations ageing rapidly. India faces a narrowing opportunity to turn its large working-age population into sustained economic gains. Today’s first editorial notes that while India remains relatively young, its fertility rate has fallen to about 1.9, and its working-age share is expected to decline after 2030. The priority is to create productive employment, improve skills, and address the mismatch between higher education and graduate jobs. Raising women’s labour-force participation is particularly important. India must also prepare for rising demand for pensions, healthcare, senior housing, and long-term care. The central challenge is to grow richer before growing old.
The reported software glitch in certain Boeing 737 MAX flight computers warrants prompt scrutiny by India’s aviation regulator, given that Air India Express and Akasa Air operate 96 such aircraft. Our second editorial highlights that the problem could disengage automated flight guidance during a missed or aborted landing, requiring pilots to revert temporarily to manual control. While Akasa says its operations are unaffected, the DGCA has yet to provide a status update. The editorial notes that the issue comes amid continuing scrutiny of the 737 MAX following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, as well as unresolved questions surrounding recent aviation incidents in India. It calls for the regulator, airlines, and pilots’ associations to assess the risk promptly and act on global safety inputs.
The retreat from globalisation could extend beyond trade and migration into cross-border capital flows, with the US at the centre of mounting pressures, cautions T N Ninan. Surging corporate and government borrowing, weakening foreign demand for US securities, and rising Treasury yields could trigger inflation or eventual capital restrictions, he writes, noting that European countries are already considering defensive measures, while trust in US markets is showing signs of erosion. For India, sustained capital outflows, rupee weakness, and rising energy costs make external resilience increasingly important. Ninan points to the RBI’s large FCNR(B) deposit mobilisation as a precautionary buffer, while stressing the need to strengthen reserves, reduce fiscal vulnerabilities, and improve investor confidence.
Carrefour’s return to India after 12 years highlights the unusual evolution of foreign retail investment in the country, where policy has distinguished sharply between multi-brand retail, cash-and-carry, franchising, and e-commerce. Nivedita Mookerji traces how Carrefour and Walmart initially used wholesale operations while seeking entry into the larger multi-brand market, which remains open in policy but has attracted no foreign operator in practice. Walmart eventually shifted its strategy through its acquisition of Flipkart, while Carrefour has now returned through a franchise partnership with Dubai-based Apparel Group. The recent relaxation of e-commerce investment rules could signal wider reform, but whether India will further blur the boundaries between retail formats while balancing foreign investment against domestic traders and employment remains an open question.
Today’s review of Jibu Elias’s book The New Divide: Power, Control & the Cost of AIexamines the contradictions beneath the excitement surrounding generative AI, from the appropriation of human data and creative labour to the environmental costs of vast data centres and the erosion of human autonomy. Amritesh Mukherjee follows the book’s four-part journey from the myths surrounding machine intelligence to its social costs, harms, and possibilities for resistance. He highlights Elias’s concerns about biased AI outputs, poorly paid and traumatised data workers, unregulated deployment in sensitive institutions, and the weakening of accountability. AI’s future, Mukherjee writes, remains a human choice, requiring safeguards, community-owned data systems, and a commitment to treating people as ends rather than means.
