He has proved a crisis manager par excellence. Only his steely resolve, courage and meticulous action could have carried 1.4 billion Indians through the once-in-a-century calamity of the pandemic and made it an opportunity. He now steers India through the perilous upending of the geopolitical and geoeconomic order.
Last week Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the longest continuously serving Prime Minister India has elected. The milestone is his, and it is India’s: no one has governed this democracy longer at a stretch, none through three consecutive wins amid politics this competitive. Beyond the record, what matters is what he did: every “unforgiving minute” filled for India with “sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”, each of those dozen years marked by 365 days of milestones, and the new, dynamic India the world now reads in the making.
I spent my working life in the field, in capitals, in board and conference rooms, and at the United Nations, where the world’s opinion of nations is made. The change this past decade is the most pronounced I have seen: condescension has given way to competitive attention and the wish to learn, in awe at India’s shift from conscientious objector and system-taker to system-shaper, all multivector engagement and strategic assertiveness, wielding both the power of advocacy and the advocacy of power.
The world reads the man accurately: not handed his authority, he reached the highest office of the world’s largest democracy from a childhood on a railway platform, without a family name; one who traversed India understanding its people, breaking the humble chapati with them, sharing joys and sorrows, building a political life from the ground up. To a world weary of inherited power and entitled succession, a leader authored rather than anointed carries particular credibility. He is the first Indian Prime Minister to wear the country’s civilisational self as his identity rather than apologise for it or play the impostor in foreign garb.
The measures of global opinion agree: for years Modi has topped the Morning Consult ranking of democratic leaders, above two-thirds, far ahead of the West. Pew finds eight in ten Indians view him favourably, more satisfied with their country’s direction than most mature democracies. Governments concur: 19 foreign parliaments addressed, some 30 state honours, several their nations’ highest.
To his people he speaks directly, baring his mind and heart in Mann Ki Baat each month; to other leaders, a charm holding Washington and Moscow, the Gulf and Europe, with remarkable alchemy.
India now exports models rather than importing them. Its digital public infrastructure carries nearly half the world’s real-time payments and moves welfare to hundreds of millions of accounts. 250 million have risen from poverty in a decade on the official measure: Antyodaya, the state’s operating principle, not a slogan, leaving no one behind and reaching the furthest behind first, as the UN’s Agenda 2030 urged. If any leader has truly governed by that maxim, it is PM Modi. In the pandemic it administered over 2 billion vaccine doses, fed 800 million free, supplied vaccines to nearly a 100 countries and medicines to 150. The UN named him a Champion of the Earth, the Gates Foundation its Global Goalkeeper of the Sustainable Development Goals, for measurable progress on poverty, hunger, health, gender equality, energy and climate; UNICEF and UN Women have lauded his championship of women and girls, from Beti Bachao Beti Padhao to the women’s parliamentary quota.
His targeted and transversal programmes have engineered a structural shift for women and girls, from home to college, kiosk to corporation, local government to Parliament. He has driven women-led development as a moral and social justice imperative, indispensable to mobilising half the nation’s capacity. No nation rises without its empowered women; India now acts on that truth at the scale of a continent.
He has restored to Indians the pride of being Indian, within the country as much as in the 35 million diaspora—largest in the world. The nation has moved as one: in the pandemic’s collective resolve, behind the armed forces after Operation Sindoor, and at the Maha Kumbh, where over 600 million pilgrims formed humanity’s largest gathering. The symbols reach for what binds: a tribal woman in Rashtrapati Bhavan; the turban, cap or tribal headdress he dons region by region in respect and affection; village Indians made heroes in Mann Ki Baat or the Padma awards; 200 million homes under the Tricolour for Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav; Vande Mataram in its 150th year; Swachh Bharat’s 110 million toilets, a people’s movement; one India, diversity knitted together, every region respected.
Modi is the first Prime Minister to articulate the ambition of India as a leading power and act on it: military and economic strength, nuclear and space capabilities, a defining role and normative weight in global systems, a critical mass of diplomatic, R&D and technological resources, built purposefully and successfully, while projecting its soft power as never before. On terrorism, the doctrine is zero tolerance, from Uri to Operation Sindoor, even as globally he remains a votary of peace and security through dialogue.
Above all, he has proved a crisis manager par excellence. Only his steely resolve, courage and meticulous action could have carried 1.4 billion Indians through the once-in-a-century calamity of the pandemic and made it an opportunity; I shudder to think what would have happened had he not been at the helm. He now steers India through the perilous upending of the geopolitical and geoeconomic order, two major wars and the narcissistic stances of leading powers, holding it to calm and stability, safeguarding its energy security, the fastest-growing major economy.
The miracle is that he dares to transform the most populous, youth-rich, complex, federal and self-contesting democracy, rife with veto wielders, vested interests and myopic, anti-national opposition leaders who plot anarchy, invite Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, and block vital reform.
Globally, the change is in posture as much as in standing. India convenes where it once attended, and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the world as one family, has become a record of delivery rather than a slogan. India is at once microcosm and macrocosm of the world: what it solves for itself it proves for everyone, and offers as global public goods. Its digital public infrastructure is shared in the Global South and North; its G20 presidency made the African Union a permanent member; it leads the International Solar Alliance; its Panchamrit climate pledges are clothed with Mission LiFE in the soul of Indian heritage. It hosted the developing world’s first global AI summit; in the fourth industrial revolution, as on the Moon, it no longer plays catch-up but leads, deploying for all.
What distinguishes the period most is that India has named its ambition aloud: this, he tells India and the world, is to be India’s century. The economy has climbed from the world’s tenth largest to its fourth; the destination is declared: Viksit Bharat, developed by 2047, the centenary of independence, modernity and heritage one inheritance, not rival claims. The restoration of civilisational sites, the recovery of its antiquities, the reclamation of the name Bharat: these are not nostalgia. They assert that a civilisation over 5,000 years old need not borrow its self-respect and greatness from anyone.
The world I spent my career observing measured India against its own unfulfilled promise. It has begun, this decade, to measure itself against destination India instead. The strongest case for this leadership is ahead: India is the vastest laboratory of human development, endeavour and perfectibility on earth, its work immense and unfinished, which is why a country this vast needs such leadership. He has stood the longest; he stands out; the record is outstanding. What remains is the mandate of the India century.
Courtesy PIB, Srinagar
(The author is the Former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations)
