As the BJP begins a month-long celebration of Modi’s 25 years in power, the milestone invites a larger reckoning: what has his tenure changed, and at what cost?

Narendra Modi turned 76 on September 17th, and the BJP has converted the date into a month-long liturgy. The Seva Sankalp Abhiyan, launched on his birthday and running to October 17, pairs blood donation camps and cleanliness drives with bike yatras linking Vadnagar, his birthplace, to Varanasi, his constituency. The arithmetic behind the campaign is real: on October 7, he completes 25 years as a head of government - Gandhinagar from 2001, New Delhi since 2014. An unbroken quarter-century in executive office is rare in any democracy. Rarer still is the scale on which one man has rewritten the terms of a nation’s politics. The ledger has substantial entries. Bank........

© The Pioneer