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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

12 years that remade India

Narendra Modi has surpassed Jawaharlal Nehru’s record as India’s longest-serving elected PM. What strikes me most is not any individual policy. It is the restoration of India’s belief in itself.

Just a few days ago, the new Congress-led government in Kerala laid out a white paper as a damning report card of the devastated public finances caused by 10 years of CPM misgovernance. Similarly, in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, he took over an economy in shambles after 10 years of misgovernance by a Congress-led UPA government. So the story of the last 12 years of Narendra Modi’s government is one of contrasts that needs to be told and understood.

In July 2019, writing in a national newspaper, I called PM Modi Asia’s leading moderniser. I argued that the first budget of his second term was the harbinger of a New India — not merely a statement of fiscal intent, but the beginning of a genuine structural expansion of a $2.7 trillion economy that had long underperformed its potential.

Seven years on, that thesis has been vindicated at a scale I could not have fully imagined when I wrote it, despite the Covid pandemic, two global wars, and multiple international challenges not of our making.

Today, 10 June 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed 4,399 consecutive days in office, surpassing the record of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, to become the longest-serving democratically elected Prime Minister in the history of the Republic. The milestone matters not as political trivia but as a historical marker. It demarcates 12 unbroken years of a singular governing vision and demands that we assess honestly what those 12 years have produced.

My answer, as someone who served in Parliament and then government for part of that period, is unambiguous: these 12 years have been the most transformative, consequential, and, in the most profound sense, redemptive chapter in India’s post-Independence story.

Also Read: The real Modi story begins where comparisons with Nehru end

The economy: from Fragile Five to sixth largest

When Narendra Modi took office in May 2014, India was classified as one of the ‘Fragile Five’ economies, vulnerable to capital flight and currency crises. Growth was slowing. Inflation was crippling the lives of millions. Corruption was rampant. Trust in the government had eroded. Policy paralysis had become a phrase symptomatic of the UPA era.

Twelve years on, the Modi era has been defined by major economic reforms, including GST, and the doubling of India’s economy to $4.3 trillion last year. As of 2026, India stands as the world’s sixth-largest economy, with an estimated GDP of approximately $4.15 trillion, a position that reflects a decade of strategic policymaking and the collective resilience of 1.4 billion citizens.

India’s economy expanded by 7.7 per cent in real terms during the financial year 2025-26, with growth accelerating to 7.8 per cent in the January-March quarter. This is not a one-quarter anomaly. It is the continuation of a decade-long pattern of India being the fastest-growing major economy in the world, a pattern built on structural reform, not........

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