From the Dharma Dhwaja atop Ram Mandir after 500 years to Mahakumbh uniting 66 crore devotees, from UNESCO recognition to world records in Yoga and Republic Day, India’s culture is going global with pride. That was India, in 2025. However, if there was one area where India outshone global peers and exceptionally so, emerging as a beacon of resilience and innovation amid global uncertainties, it was the economy. Under the steadfast leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the year marked a pivotal chapter in the nation’s economic narrative, characterised by bold reforms that propelled India towards its vision of a Viksit Bharat—a developed India by 2047.

With GDP growth surging by 8.2 per cent in Q2FY26, India solidified its position as the fastest-growing major economy globally, outpacing the G-7’s sluggish 1.5 per cent average and the world’s modest 3 per cent growth rate. Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition (LoP), had mocked the Indian Economy as “dead". But with our GDP valued at over $4.18 trillion, India has now surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, showing the mirror to the Gandhi scion. We are also poised to displace Germany from the third rank in the next 2.5-3 years with a projected GDP of over $7.3 trillion by 2030.

Modinomics has never been about incremental tokenism. Therefore, in a bold move, 2025 saw 100 per cent FDI liberalisation in insurance, unlocking billions in foreign capital. This reform, part of a broader financial sector overhaul, will bolster India’s financial resilience amid global volatility. Again, the Securities Markets Code (SMC) Bill, 2025, is a landmark legislation to consolidate and modernise India’s complex securities’ laws into a single, unified rulebook to streamline compliance, boost investor protection and enhance SEBI’s regulatory powers. Clearly, 2025 was not about incrementalism, but about undoing decades of hesitation and doing so without chaos, coercion or cronyism. 2025 has been all about irreversible shifts in how the Modi government governs the economy, with a sharp focus on land, labour, capital and welfare.

To add to the year-end cheer, industrial production, in November 2025, grew by 6.7 per cent, with manufacturing up by a solid 8 per cent. In growth terms, capital goods’ output rose 10.4 per cent year on year, infrastructure and construction goods expanded 12.1 per cent, intermediate goods by a healthy 7.3 per cent and consumer durables by a massive 10.3 per cent. Consumer non-durables also grew by a solid 7.3 per cent. Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), declined from 29.17 per cent in FY2013-14 to 11.28 per cent in FY2022-23 as per NITI Aayog. Extreme poverty also dropped from 27.1 per cent in FY2011-12 to 5.3 per cent in FY2022-23, with over 269 million people lifted out of extreme poverty in this period. Things took a dramatic turn for the better in 2025 as Modinomics combined structural reforms with welfarism, judiciously.

The remarkable achievements this year were not mere happenstance but the fruit of meticulously crafted policies that fostered investment, streamlined regulations and empowered........

© News18