How Modi remade India

On June 10, Narendra Modi became the country’s continuously elected prime minister, surpassing Indian independence hero Jawaharlal Nehru, who served 4,398 days after the first general election. While Nehru led India for five years before these first elections and Indira Gandhi served longer overall, although not continuously, Modi undoubtedly ranks alongside them as one of the three most influential post-independence Indian leaders. Modi’s legacy, like theirs, will define the way forward for India.

Modi has already led India’s most profound realignment since 1947, overseeing dizzying progress in economic modernization and state capacity development, as well as dismaying setbacks in institutional independence and minority inclusion. Analyzing these changes is not a simple academic exercise. It is a way to discern how India will face the 21st century.

Modi’s crowning achievement was the creation of cutting-edge technological and physical infrastructure, which fundamentally changed the lives of more than 1.4 billion people. Before Modi became prime minister in 2014, hundreds of millions of Indians were excluded from the formal banking sector. Their reliance on informal alternatives has created space for corruption and systemic “leakage” (funds lost to intermediaries).

Building on an initiative started by his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, Modi oversaw the implementation of a new system that bypassed traditional banking structures, instead linking zero-balance bank accounts (Jan Dhan Yojana), biometric identity cards (Aadhaar) and mobile phone numbers. This “JAM trinity” gave rise to the Unified Payments Interface, a real-time public payments protocol that allows everyone from roadside sellers to tech giants to process transactions instantly and without fees.

More importantly, this approach has enabled the expansion of the direct benefit transfer system, whereby subsidies and benefits are credited directly to beneficiaries’ bank accounts. Since its introduction in 2013, DBT, along with other social protection programs, has helped raise an estimated amount 250 million lift people out of multidimensional poverty. Additionally, by eliminating middlemen, this system has significantly reduced corruption in remittances, even as it thrives in other areas of the economy.

Infrastructure is another positive legacy. For decades, substandard logistics has hampered India’s economic growth. Modi’s government has brought a wartime sense of urgency to the problem, investing record amounts in highways, airports and high-speed rail networks. Ports are modernized and expanded. Rural electrification is largely complete. And drinking water is delivered to more than 100 million rural homes that previously relied on community wells.

On foreign policy, Modi emulated Nehru, asserting that India is a formidable and independent player on the world stage. Rather than taking partisan positions in global geopolitical rivalries, he supported India’s long-standing commitment to strategic autonomy and pioneered the doctrine of ‘multi-alignment’.

This includes strengthening relations with Gulf monarchies, serving as a voice for the Global South in international forums, and striking trade deals with the European Union and the United Kingdom. This also involves maintaining ties with Russia – from whom India sources critical defense equipment – ​​while maintaining a strong strategic relationship with the United States. India remains a pillar of the U.S.-led Quad security alliance, alongside Australia and Japan, even though President Donald Trump’s administration has recently questioned the U.S. commitment to the Quad and its ambition to curb the influence of a rising China.

Mistakes were made. For example, India should arguably have positioned itself as a neutral party and potential mediator in the war against Iran, rather than giving the impression that it was on the side of the United States and Israel. Nevertheless, during Modi’s tenure, India emerged as an independent pole in the global order.

But Modi’s record also draws widespread criticism. The Modi government’s founding philosophy, Hindutva, seeks to anchor India’s cultural identity in the Hindu heritage of 80% of the population. For India’s Muslim and Christian minorities, this effort – and the ideological intolerance of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – has directly contributed to a growing sense of social and political marginalization.

Critics warning that India’s pluralistic safeguards are eroding point to the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, which religion introduced as a criterion for refugees to obtain citizenship, explicitly excluding Muslims. The growing influence of hardline Hindu nationalist forces, as well as aggressive messaging from the ruling party that demonizes minorities (particularly Muslims), has compounded these concerns.

More broadly, the Modi government is criticized for disarming or co-opting vital democratic institutions, ranging from mainstream media to independent national watchdogs like the Election Commission and the Information Commission, and even elements of the judiciary. Independent journalists, civil society organizations, and political opponents are routinely subject to intense legal and financial scrutiny by state investigative agencies. Global democracy watchdogs have sounded the alarm on the shrinking civic spaces in India, describing the country as a “electoral autocracy» or a “illiberal democracy.”

India also faces economic challenges. Certainly, it is the fastest-growing major economy in the world, with rapidly expanding domestic manufacturing and technology startup ecosystems. But this has not translated into enough high-quality jobs in the formal sector for the millions of young Indians who enter the job market each year.

For some, Modi is the leader who finally shattered the status quo, building an Indian state that is faster, more capable and more globally assertive than it was a decade ago and one that is built on an unapologetic new civilizational trust. For others, Modi is the figure who eroded the liberal-democratic norms and vibrant debate that India had long embodied.

Both assessments have merit. Furthermore, both results arise from the same phenomenon: the centralization of power. The very changes that allowed Modi’s government to expand India’s infrastructure, strengthen its welfare system, and project geopolitical strength have also made India’s pluralistic institutions vulnerable and enabled the promotion of bigotry and intimidation against minorities.

India under Modi has been neither a true economic miracle nor a simple case of democratic decline. It is an ambitious and formidable country that is charting its own course. The world must face it in such complicated conditions.

Shashi Tharoorformer UN Under-Secretary-General and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is a fourth-term MP from the opposition Indian National Congress.

Copyright: Project union2026