India’s mining reforms spark debate over federalism, while care and urban planning face new challenges

India’s new mining amendments aim to attract investment but raise concerns over fiscal federalism, as debates intensify around care infrastructure and urban governance reforms to support the country’s rapid growth and demographic changes.

India’s mining reforms are aimed at making investment more predictable at a time when New Delhi is chasing strategic minerals, but Business Standard argues that the price of that certainty may be too high. The amendments to the Mines and Minerals Act widen flexibility in lease operations, captive mine sales and exploration, and they are meant to improve price discovery. Yet the editorial warns that the retrospective element risks favouring defaulters while disadvantaging firms that have already paid state levies, while also weakening fiscal federalism by cutting mineral-rich states off a major revenue stream. That concern sits within a wider debate over how India should balance faster mineral development, stronger investment incentives and the constitutional role of states in taxing natural resources. According to recent legal reporting on the Supreme Court’s mineral-tax ruling, states have gained fresh backing for their claim on mineral revenues, underlining how sensitive this fiscal balance remains.

The paper’s second editorial turns to caregiving and says India needs more than short-term training schemes if it wants to build a credible care economy. With the country ageing quickly and family-based care arrangements under strain, the argument is that caregiving must be treated as social infrastructure, not informal charity work. That means recognised qualifications, national standards, accreditation, decent pay, contracts, insurance and safe conditions, not just a larger pool of trained workers. The editorial also points to a National Caregiving Council, a registry and a digital platform as ways to improve coordination and workforce planning. The broader payoff, it says, would be lower household stress, more room for women’s employment and better-quality jobs in a sector that is likely to become more important over time.

T T Ram Mohan’s column on bank governance takes aim at the limits of regulatory fixes. The Reserve Bank of India has tried to make boards more effective by narrowing the number of items that crowd their agendas, but the columnist argues that the real problem is how boards work in practice: meetings are too infrequent, papers arrive too late and “table” items are often sprung on directors without warning. He also criticises box-ticking board evaluations and says supervisory attention should extend to meeting frequency, the circulation of material and the quality of review, even if the central bank cannot prescribe every detail of boardroom behaviour. The point is that governance reform depends as much on discipline and preparation as on rule changes.

Amit Kapoor’s essay on cities argues that India’s urban future cannot be managed by treating settlements as fixed boundaries or mere collections of infrastructure. Instead, cities need to be understood as living systems, with planning that encourages reuse, circular economies and nature-based solutions. The editorial says weak municipal finances, limited local autonomy and delayed elections have left city institutions unable to keep pace with rapid urban growth, especially in peri-urban areas and small settlements that lack proper administrative capacity. Yet it also sees an opportunity: most of the infrastructure India will need in coming decades has not yet been built, which means governance, land use and service delivery can still be redesigned for better outcomes.