Opportunity can be misleading. A market may be open to new firms, a country may qualify for global sporting events, banks may have repaired their balance sheets, publishing may be easier than ever, and conservation may enjoy broad public support. But access creates only the possibility of success. What converts that possibility into durable outcomes is capability — the skills, institutions, judgement and infrastructure needed to make opportunity count.
Our first editorial today, “Enabling competition”, looks at India’s manufacturing ambitions. The latest Monthly Economic Review argues that the country needs more firms, stronger competition and greater innovation if manufacturing is to become a larger engine of growth. Protection or investment incentives alone cannot deliver this. Firms need access to technology, finance, skilled workers, efficient logistics and deeper markets, while regulation must allow new entrants to challenge incumbents. India’s domestic market gives manufacturers scale, but scale without productivity will not create globally competitive companies.
The second editorial, “Reality check at Nagoya”, takes the argument to sport. India’s performance at the Asian Games in Nagoya fell short of expectations despite flashes of success. The editorial cautions against reading too much into isolated medals or individual breakthroughs. Sustained sporting performance requires a deeper system of talent identification, coaching, competition, sports science and long-term athlete development. The objective should not just be to send more athletes to international events, but to create enough high-quality competitors to win consistently.
Ajay Chhibber’s column, “Banking for Viksit Bharat”, applies the same capacity test to finance. India’s banking system has travelled a long way from the bad-loan crisis, with cleaner balance sheets, improved profitability and stronger capital positions. But financing a developed economy will demand much more. Banks must become better at assessing risk, lending to productive sectors, financing long-gestation projects and serving smaller enterprises without relying excessively on collateral or government direction. Deeper bond markets, stronger competition and more sophisticated financial intermediation will also be necessary. Repairing banks was the first phase; building institutions capable of financing the next stage of development is the harder one.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar’s column, “The search for good writing”, finds the same distinction in media and entertainment. Platforms have multiplied and the routes to audiences have expanded, but access to distribution has not produced an abundance of strong writing. Films, television and streaming still depend on writers with craft, training, time and institutional support. More screens create demand for stories; they do not automatically create storytellers.
“Conflicts in the conservation universe”, Ranjona Banerji’s review of Nature Contested, edited by Mahesh Rangarajan, Ravi Agarwal and Rinki Sarkar, turns our attention to environmental policy. Conservation involves competing claims over forests, wildlife, local livelihoods and human-animal conflict. Good intentions are not enough; managing these tensions requires scientific understanding, local knowledge and institutions capable of making difficult trade-offs.
Opening the door creates opportunity, show these pieces. But what happens beyond it depends on the capability to walk through.
