In its 12th year, Modi government set new benchmarks

As 2025 draws to a close, Narendra Modi is in his 12th year as Prime Minister. In most democracies, such longevity signals consolidation, caution, and a gradual retreat into legacy management. In India’s case, it has done something strikingly different. Each year carried a defining idea and left a lasting impact.

In 2014, he brought in the Jan Dhan Yojana, transforming the banking system and making it more inclusive. Next year, he laid the foundations of Digital India, followed by Startup India in 2016, promoting entrepreneurship. In 2017, GST was introduced, leading to economic unification and shared federal sovereignty. His next significant move was rolling out of Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance programme.

At the beginning of his second term, his government abrogated Article 370, completing India’s political integration. In 2020, during the global pandemic, he brought in the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana to ensure food security for the poor. In the next few years, through PM Gati Shakti, Agnipath, and the passing of the women’s reservation law, his government contributed to remarkable transformation. In 2024, Lord Ram finally came back to his abode in Ayodhya after 500-years of exile.

In 2025, his government simultaneously delivered multiple structural decisions across the economy, energy, agriculture, security, labour, and governance. Through GST 2.0, rates were simplified, consumer burden reduced, compliance eased, and distortions corrected. Not through coercion, but through trust built over eight years of cooperative federalism.

Further, the SHANTI Act, opening the nuclear energy sector to regulated private participation, represents a leap that few nations have attempted. By replacing outdated legal frameworks and allowing private entities to build, own, and operate nuclear power plants under strict oversight, India has reimagined nuclear energy as a strategic growth sector. This decision will likely be seen as a turning point in India’s clean energy journey.

Agriculture, long treated as a politically sensitive area, saw a similar shift. The PM Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana does for agriculture what the Aspirational Districts Programme did for India’s most backward regions. By targeting low-performing agricultural districts with focused investments, convergence of schemes, district-level accountability, and outcome-based monitoring, the government has moved beyond a one-size-fits-all farm policy.

Internal security marks another decisive transformation. In 2025, Left-Wing Extremism was finally contained. It was the result of a decade-long strategy combining security operations with the development of infrastructure, welfare delivery, administrative presence and an ironclad political will. Regions once described as “liberated zones” quietly returned to constitutional normalcy. Maoism now ceases to be a structural threat.

Further, Operation Sindoor redefined global deterrence. The significance lay not in the strikes alone, but in the message they conveyed to Pakistan. It signals a new operational paradigm: Terror is treated as an act of war, nuclear blackmail is rejected outright, and responsibility is fixed squarely on state sponsors.

Governance reform extended into areas that had long remained politically untouched. The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, addressed one of India’s most opaque land governance problems. By dismantling the doctrine of “waqf by user,” mandating registration, and subjecting claims to transparent scrutiny, the law ended decades of unregulated and irreversible land capture.

Alongside these reforms came the implementation of the new labour codes, consolidating archaic laws into a modern framework that balances worker protection with enterprise flexibility. These reforms will shape hiring, formalisation, and productivity for years to come.

A host of other transformative achievements — from raising the tax-free income slab for the middle classes to Rs 12 lakh to FDI reforms in insurance to signing multiple FTAs — add to the record this year.

What makes 2025 politically unusual is not merely the volume of reforms, but their timing. Conventional wisdom suggests that popular leaders exhaust their capacity to introduce reforms early. By the 12th year, governments typically turn defensive or run out of ideas as popularity wanes. PM Modi has done the opposite. His achievements in 2025 have managed to surpass records of the previous years.

The reform plans are already in place for 2026 — from restructuring higher education to synchronising electoral cycles through One Nation, One Election. That his performance in the coming year may outdo even that of 2025 sets a new global benchmark for democratic governance.

The writer is CEO, Bluekraft Digital Foundation and was earlier director (content), MyGov