Opinion | Modi@12: Only PM Could Navigate This World In Flux

What distinguishes these record-breaking 12 years under Modi is the density of the crises India faced with him at the helm and emerged on the other side more resilient

Twelve years is a long time in politics. In geopolitics, it is a different measure entirely.

The world Narendra Modi stepped into on 26 May 2014 was a globalised order, still confident in its own shape, with American primacy largely unquestioned and supply chains extending freely across borders, but it bears almost no resemblance to the one he governs today.

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What distinguishes these record-breaking 12 years under Modi, as he steps into the ranks of India’s longest-serving elected Prime Minister, is the density of the crises India faced with him at the helm and emerged on the other side more resilient.

He governed across three distinct phases of external disruption, each more demanding than the last. The domestic consolidation and first strategic assertion of 2014 to 2019; the pandemic, the Chinese border confrontation, and the post-COVID restructuring of 2019 to 2024; and finally, the compounded volatility of a Trumpian transactional America, a Hormuz-blocking war in the Middle East, and a Pakistan military engagement that tested India’s new security doctrine.

The Economy That Doubled

When Modi came to office in 2014, India’s economy was growing at under five per cent, burdened by investor anxiety, policy paralysis, and a series of high-profile corruption scandals that had effectively frozen decision-making. The first term addressed structural foundations.

The first term was about architecture before ambition. Getting the GST passed in 2017 — a reform that had defeated every predecessor since the 1980s — was itself an act of political will, not just economic desire. India finally had a single goods and services market for thirty states, which had previously operated as semi-separate commercial territories. Jan Dhan brought hundreds of millions of people into formal banking for the first time, and the Aadhaar-linked transfer infrastructure that followed gradually stripped out the leakage from welfare payments that had been accepted as permanent. None of this was glamorous. All of it mattered.

By the time those foundations had been in place, the numbers had shifted decisively. India’s economy, worth around $2.1 trillion when Modi took office, had reached $4.3 trillion by 2025, a doubling that no comparable economy achieved in the same window. The National Statistics Office put growth at........

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