PM Modi’s achievements in 2025 surpasses the previous years

As 2025 draws to a close, Narendra Modi completes his twelfth year as the Prime Minister of India. In most democracies, such longevity, rare as it is, usually 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 Jan Dhan, converting banking from privilege into infrastructure, laying the foundation on which multiple structures have later been built.

In 2015, he laid the foundations of Digital India, creating a platform state rather than a scheme-driven one.

In 2016, he ignited Startup India, normalising the entrepreneurial culture in India’s middle and aspirational classes.

In 2017, he delivered GST, completing India’s economic unification and a shared federal sovereignty.

In 2018, he rolled out Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance programme.

In 2019, he abrogated Article 370, finishing an unfinished task of political integration of Bharat.

In 2020, during the global pandemic, he brought in the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana to ensure food security for the poor.

In 2021, he introduced PM Gati Shakti, forever transforming how infrastructure is planned and executed at scale.

In 2022, he reshaped military induction through Agnipath and, in 2023, passed the Women’s Reservation Bill, signalling a decisive shift towards women-led development.

The year 2024 marked the return of Lord Ram to his abode in Ayodhya after a 500-year exile.

Despite such an illustrious record, in 2025, PM Modi still stands apart from each of the previous years. Not because it delivered a single headline reform, but because it simultaneously delivered multiple structural decisions across the economy, energy, agriculture, security, labour, and governance.

The rollout of GST 2.0 in 2025 marked the rarest of Indian policy outcomes: Deep tax rationalisation achieved with complete federal unanimity. Rates were simplified, consumer burdens reduced, compliance eased, and distortions corrected. Not through coercion, but through trust built over eight years of cooperative federalism. GST 2.0 was not merely a tax tweak; it was a demonstration that large, consensus-driven reform is still possible in India.

Yet the most consequential economic reform of the year lay in an area where India has traditionally been cautious to the point of paralysis.

The SHANTI Bill, opening the nuclear energy sector to regulated private participation, represents a leap few nations — developed or otherwise — have attempted so decisively. 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 not as a state monopoly but as a strategic growth sector. In an era of climate commitments and energy security anxieties, this decision will likely be seen as a turning point in India’s clean energy journey.

Agriculture, long treated as politically sensitive but structurally stagnant, saw a similar shift in approach.

The PM Dhan Dhanya 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 one-size-fits-all farm policy. The emphasis is no longer just on support prices or subsidies, but on productivity, diversification, irrigation, storage, and credit access — precisely where Indian agriculture has historically faltered.

Internal security marked another decisive transformation. In 2025, the Left-Wing Extremism was finally contained. This outcome was not accidental, nor purely kinetic. It was the result of a decade-long strategy combining security operations with infrastructure penetration, welfare delivery, administrative presence and an iron-clad political will. Regions once described as “liberated zones” quietly returned to constitutional normalcy. Maoism, which had survived multiple governments, ceased to be a structural threat.

Externally, India’s security doctrine crossed a new and decisive threshold. Operation Sindoor redefined global deterrence. For the first time, a nuclear-armed adversary was pulverised by sustained conventional missile strikes. The significance lay not in the strikes alone, but in the message they conveyed to Pakistan: Nuclear capability no longer guarantees immunity from precision retaliation. India’s response signalled 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. In doing so, it restored balance between minority welfare, property rights, and the rule of law, an achievement previous governments had avoided, despite mounting evidence of misuse.

Alongside this 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 of tax-free income slab for middle classes to Rs. 12 lakhs (it was Rs. 2 lakhs in 2014) to the RBI drastically reducing regulatory cholesterol (from 9,000 circulars to just 244), and from FDI reforms in insurance to signing of multiple FTAs to further boost India’s exports –add to the already enviable record in the year. What makes 2025 politically unusual is not merely the volume of reform, but its timing.

Conventional wisdom suggests that popular leaders exhaust their reform capacity early. By the twelfth year, if at all they last this long, governments typically turn defensive or run out of ideas as the popularity wanes. PM Modi has done the opposite. In Modi’s case, the first year itself was a blockbuster, as was each successive year. And yet, this year, he has managed to surpass each of the previous records. The electoral outcomes of 2025 matched the governance outcome. For the first time in his Prime Ministership, PM Modi won both elections – one at the start of the year and one at the end. What he could not do in 2015 or 2020, he managed to do in 2025, defying all conventional electoral wisdom.

The reform plan is in place for 2026: From higher education restructuring to electoral synchronisation through One Nation One Election. That 2025 outdid Modi’s previous best years, and that 2026 is positioned to go further still, defies the normal arc of electoral politics. In doing so, it sets not just a national milestone, but a new global benchmark for democratic governance.

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