Hello, and welcome to the Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day’s Opinion page.
Today’s first editorial backs the Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2026, as a potentially important step towards making tribunal appointments more independent, transparent, and timely. It notes that tribunals were created to ease the judiciary’s burden and handle specialised cases, but vacancies and inadequate resources can undermine their purpose. The proposed National Tribunals Commission, dominated by serving or retired judges and supported by an independent secretariat, would reduce the executive’s role in selecting tribunal members. The provision for recommending a single candidate for each vacancy, along with strict timelines for appointments is also welcome. Importantly, the framework also holds useful lessons for reforming the higher judiciary’s collegium system.
India’s aviation sector stands apart from most industries in its repeated reliance on expatriate chief executives, even as Indian-origin executives increasingly lead major global companies. Today’s second editorial traces this gap to the sector’s relatively recent opening to private competition and Air India’s decades as a state-owned monopoly, which left the country with a shallow pool of experienced aviation managers. It contends that India should build a stronger pipeline of world-class aviation executives, while airlines should continue to prioritise experience and competence over nationality when making senior appointments. The careers of Willie Walsh, Tewolde Gebremariam and other expat chiefs illustrate the value of global expertise, while past failures highlight the need to learn from cultural and bureaucratic mismatches.
Effective governance depends not only on sound policy, but also on the processes through which it is implemented. The ethanol-blending programme illustrates the risks of inadequate consultation with automobile manufacturers and the absence of an independent mechanism to certify the quality of E20 petrol. A similar problem arises with the proposed reintroduction of merchant discount rates on UPI transactions. While A K Bhattacharya welcomes the move to make merchants contribute towards the cost of maintaining digital payments, he flags a potential conflict of interest because NPCI, whose committee will determine the levy, is owned by banks that could benefit from it. These shortcomings, he cautions, highlight the need for stakeholder consultation and independent oversight as the government embarks on further reforms.
India’s scientific ambitions require a new generation of philanthropic capital willing to fund research long before its commercial or practical value becomes clear. The column draws on Jamsetji Tata’s founding of IISc and the creation of TIFR to illustrate how patient private funding can seed institutions and capabilities that shape national development decades later. Ashish Dhawan and Varun Aggarwal identify four areas where philanthropy can make a distinctive contribution: strengthening public institutions, building new ones, financing high-risk research, and supporting work whose beneficiaries cannot form a viable market. With the government seeking substantial non-state funding for the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, they contend that India’s wealth creators have a rare opportunity to build scientific capabilities crucial to its economic and technological independence.
Rakesh Goswami’s India’s Most Dangerous Serial Killer: Shankariya Kanpatimar reconstructs the crimes of a Rajasthan killer who murdered nearly 70 people in the 1970s, while focusing as much on the investigation and prosecution as on the killings themselves. Sneha Pathak’s review notes that Goswami’s painstaking research, drawing on police records, FIRs, newspaper reports and interviews, produces a serious true-crime narrative rather than a sensationalised portrait of the criminal. She particularly highlights the book’s examination of police lapses, including rigid theories, complacency during periods of calm and the failure to sustain investigations because many victims were economically disadvantaged. Though detailed legal and forensic material sometimes slows the narrative, the book’s refusal to turn Shankariya into a larger-than-life figure is ultimately its strength.
