Hello, and welcome to the Best of BS Opinion, our wrap of the day’s Opinion page.
UPI’s rapid growth has made its long-term financial sustainability an important concern, particularly as government incentives cover only a fraction of the system’s operating costs. The decision to impose a 0.4 per cent merchant discount rate on person-to-merchant transactions above Rs 2,000, while keeping smaller payments and person-to-person transfers free, offers a workable solution, notes today’s first editorial. Such transactions represent only 4-5 per cent of volumes but about 70 per cent of value, limiting the impact on everyday users. A modest MDR can help banks and fintechs fund service improvements, cybersecurity, and competition, while reducing reliance on government support and the risks of an entrenched duopoly.
The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor’s full commissioning is a significant step towards improving India’s logistics infrastructure, connecting industrial centres in the north and west more efficiently with ports, says our second editorial. Along with the Eastern corridor, it creates a 2,843-km dedicated freight network that can substantially reduce transit times, congestion, fuel consumption, and emissions. But the infrastructure’s economic gains will depend on how efficiently the wider logistics ecosystem functions. Terminal delays, restrictive operating rules, inadequate feeder connectivity, and port-handling charges currently erode potential cost savings from faster rail movement. With logistics costs still high, particularly for smaller firms, the priority should be seamless multimodal connectivity, stronger feeder links, and better port capacity.
Artificial intelligence could transform development as profoundly as earlier technological breakthroughs, but its benefits and risks will depend on policy choices. Nitin Desai outlines four priorities for India: helping build an international consensus to keep advanced AI under human control; limiting adverse effects on employment and income distribution; developing domestically controlled AI models that reduce dependence on US and Chinese systems and mitigate political bias; and expanding domestically owned data centres while imposing rigorous standards on energy and water use. He also highlights the growing concentration of AI capabilities among major powers, warning that India risks becoming technologically dependent unless it develops sufficient sovereign capabilities in models, computing infrastructure, and data.
Delhi’s student housing crisis reflects a broader failure to match urban growth with safe, affordable rental accommodation. Amit Kapoor highlights how students drawn to the capital by universities and employment face rapidly rising rents in a largely unregulated market, where weak enforcement can turn overcrowding into a safety hazard. The Satya Niketan collapse illustrates the limits of blaming individual owners when public provision has failed to meet demand. Kapoor points to restrictive building norms, inadequate hostel capacity, and housing policies focused overwhelmingly on ownership as structural problems. Drawing on Vienna and Germany, he advocates public land, regulated rents, and long-term financing to expand rental housing.
Akankshya Abismruta’s finds Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s The Undocumented a deeply moving account of forced migration that places the journey of a family from Bangladesh’s Sunderbans to Kolkata against climate change, political borders, and Islamophobia. Kundalia traces Safrat, Nur, and Nabeel’s lives after Cyclone Aila destroys their livelihood, while capturing the precarious networks that help migrants find shelter, work, money, and forged documents. The book navigates the family’s internal tensions, particularly the patriarchal restrictions placed on Nur and Nabeel’s decline. Kundalia’s empathetic narrative, Abismruta notes, avoids generalisation while revealing migration as a complex process shaped by nature, politics, and survival.
UPI’s rapid growth has made its long-term financial sustainability an important concern, particularly as government incentives cover only a fraction of the system’s operating costs. The decision to impose a 0.4 per cent merchant discount rate on person-to-merchant transactions above Rs 2,000, while keeping smaller payments and person-to-person transfers free, offers a workable solution, notes today’s first editorial. Such transactions represent only 4-5 per cent of volumes but about 70 per cent of value, limiting the impact on everyday users. A modest MDR can help banks and fintechs fund service improvements, cybersecurity, and competition, while reducing reliance on government support and the risks of an entrenched duopoly.
The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor’s full commissioning is a significant step towards improving India’s logistics infrastructure, connecting industrial centres in the north and west more efficiently with ports, says our second editorial. Along with the Eastern corridor, it creates a 2,843-km dedicated freight network that can substantially reduce transit times, congestion, fuel consumption, and emissions. But the infrastructure’s economic gains will depend on how efficiently the wider logistics ecosystem functions. Terminal delays, restrictive operating rules, inadequate feeder connectivity, and port-handling charges currently erode potential cost savings from faster rail movement. With logistics costs still high, particularly for smaller firms, the priority should be seamless multimodal connectivity, stronger feeder links, and better port capacity.
Artificial intelligence could transform development as profoundly as earlier technological breakthroughs, but its benefits and risks will depend on policy choices. Nitin Desai outlines four priorities for India: helping build an international consensus to keep advanced AI under human control; limiting adverse effects on employment and income distribution; developing domestically controlled AI models that reduce dependence on US and Chinese systems and mitigate political bias; and expanding domestically owned data centres while imposing rigorous standards on energy and water use. He also highlights the growing concentration of AI capabilities among major powers, warning that India risks becoming technologically dependent unless it develops sufficient sovereign capabilities in models, computing infrastructure, and data.
Delhi’s student housing crisis reflects a broader failure to match urban growth with safe, affordable rental accommodation. Amit Kapoor highlights how students drawn to the capital by universities and employment face rapidly rising rents in a largely unregulated market, where weak enforcement can turn overcrowding into a safety hazard. The Satya Niketan collapse illustrates the limits of blaming individual owners when public provision has failed to meet demand. Kapoor points to restrictive building norms, inadequate hostel capacity, and housing policies focused overwhelmingly on ownership as structural problems. Drawing on Vienna and Germany, he advocates public land, regulated rents, and long-term financing to expand rental housing.
Akankshya Abismruta’s finds Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s The Undocumented a deeply moving account of forced migration that places the journey of a family from Bangladesh’s Sunderbans to Kolkata against climate change, political borders, and Islamophobia. Kundalia traces Safrat, Nur, and Nabeel’s lives after Cyclone Aila destroys their livelihood, while capturing the precarious networks that help migrants find shelter, work, money, and forged documents. The book navigates the family’s internal tensions, particularly the patriarchal restrictions placed on Nur and Nabeel’s decline. Kundalia’s empathetic narrative, Abismruta notes, avoids generalisation while revealing migration as a complex process shaped by nature, politics, and survival.
