The best BS opinion: The government must

Hello, and welcome to Best of BS Opinion, the finale of our opinion page for the day. The ongoing conflict with Iran and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is exposing the fragility of global energy markets and complicating India’s financial management. High crude prices have forced state oil companies to increase under-recoveries, while the government has been hesitant to pass on the higher costs to consumers. Our First editorial argument Price controls are not sustainable and support should instead be temporary, targeted and fiscally prudent. Yet India’s welfare architecture makes precise targeting politically and administratively difficult. Although there are no easy solutions, the government will have to allow more price adjustments as the situation could worsen. With inventories dwindling and supply risks rising, policymakers may soon have to prepare for a sharp rise in fuel prices and macroeconomic stress. The Indian government’s Rs 37,500 crore effort for coal gasification shows that it is ultimately attempting to extract more value from domestic coal reserves as well as reduce dependence on imported energy and industrial feedstock. By converting coal into syngas for chemicals, fertilizers and hydrogen, the policy seeks to transform coal from a power generation fuel to an industrial raw material, Our second editorial notes. Although it could potentially strengthen energy security and reduce the import bill, gasification remains capital-intensive and technically demanding. But it also provides a value-added route for India’s ‘dirty’ coal. Therefore, the debate should not simply be a choice between coal and clean energy. The challenge will be to balance industrial realism with the long-term transition to clean energy. Amit Kapoor argues That India’s urban housing shortage should not be treated as a welfare challenge, but as a major infrastructure and development opportunity. With the deficit potentially reaching 7 crore households, he said affordable housing could generate substantial economic multipliers in construction, manufacturing, logistics and finance, as well as boost employment and consumption. Current policies, focused on home ownership, largely exclude informal workers and low-income migrants who lack land or stable income. Instead, a publicly supported rental housing model built on leased public land and at regulated rents should be adopted. Without structural reforms, India’s rapid urbanization will only lead to slum growth, stress on infrastructure, and deepening economic inefficiencies. India’s inflation-targeting regime has successfully restored macroeconomic stability and reduced chronically high inflation, but at the cost of excessively tight monetary policy and weak growth. Prasanna Tantri writesArguing that the Reserve Bank of India relies too heavily on backward-looking inflation data, even though interest rate decisions influence future economic conditions. They say this tightening has repeatedly driven real interest rates excessively high during periods of banking stress, supply-side inflation shocks and slow growth. Rather than abandoning inflation targeting, India would be better off adopting a more flexible, forward-looking framework that takes into account policymakers’ decisions as well as better measures of fiscal conditions, market signals and inflation expectations. in his review river traveler, Praise for Chintan Girish Modi Sanjay Hazarika’s book is a detailed, deeply human account of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra river system and the societies shaped by it. Blending travel writing, reportage, environmental history and geopolitics, Hazarika explores migration, climate change, indigenous cultures and China’s dam-building ambitions with intellectual curiosity and emotional clarity. The review argues that the book’s strength lies in its refusal to privilege specific expertise over lived experience, while also conveying the physical and psychological demands of fieldwork. The river emerges not just as a resource, but as a civilizational and ecological force.