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Business Standard

Best of BS Opinion: Catching the world in mid-spin and messy realities

When the first monsoon rain hits the ground, children in small towns and villages still rush out with bags of glass marbles. You squat, you aim, you flick, but the marble veers off into a puddle, shoots left instead of straight, or sinks halfway. Playing marbles in the mud is a lesson in both chaos and cunning. Hitting your mark requires patience, instinct, and practice. Not brute force. Much like today's world, where every move is an attempt to steer outcomes in unpredictable terrain. Let's dive in. That's what India faces as Donald Trump's 90-day tariff pause ends on July 8. As global trade splinters, India needs to aim sharply, pursuing a US deal while pushing ahead with the EU and integrating with Asian value chains. But, as our first editorial notes, too many shots have gone astray. The US has managed only one trade deal to close since the negotiations began. The rest? Still circling the mud. And the mud's only getting warmer. The latest World Meteorological Department report, summarised in our second editorial, shows Asia is heating at double the global average. Floods, droughts, heatwaves, all signs that climate targets, much like a marble in slick soil, aren't landing where we want them. The poorest, farmers and fishers, are getting hit hardest. Trade's global rulebook, too, is slipping from grip. In her column, Amita Batra argues that the WTO's one-rule-for-all model is buckling. Nations now prefer FTAs or issue-based 'plurilaterals'. But without a new framework, what she calls 'variable geometry',even the best players can't align the shot. The same misalignment plagues marketing, writes Rama Bijapurkar. Being customer-obsessed often misses the point. Real customer centricity, she says, is solving problems customers actually face, not just what the company wants to hear. It's not about more spin; it's about hitting the truth. Finally, in Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, reviewed by Sneha Pathak, Caroline Fraser probes what lies beneath the killer's strike, sometimes quite literally. Lead poisoning, corporate neglect, and toxic systems may have warped minds before crimes were even conceived. It's not just about the marble. It's about the field it rolls in. Stay tuned, and remember, sometimes it's not enough to aim well. You must know where you're standing and put the right amount of power behind the shot!