From the welfare of the poorest citizen to the assertion of national sovereignty, the BJP-led Government has prosecuted an agenda of transformation whose breadth and ambition few administrations in independent India can match. In May 2014, the BJP assumed power. What followed over the next ten-plus years – across two full terms and now a third – has been a systematic and, at times, contentious effort to remake the sinews of the Indian state. The Government’s most consequential work has perhaps been its quiet revolution at the bottom of the pyramid. The Jan Dhan Yojana enrolled over 500 million previously unbanked citizens into the formal financial system, laying the plumbing for a welfare state that could, for the first time, deliver benefits directly into the hands of the poor without the predatory mediation of middlemen. The PM Awas Yojana constructed tens of millions of pucca homes for families who had never known a permanent roof. The Ujjwala Yojana has extended clean cooking gas to over 100 million rural households, freeing women from the toxic burden of biomass fuel and transforming domestic life in ways that no statistic can fully capture. Free grain distribution under the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana has ensured food security for over 800 million citizens.
For women and marginalised communities, the decade brought both symbolic and structural change. The abolition of triple talaq ended an arbitrary and long-contested practice that had left millions of Muslim women in legal and financial distress. The Women’s Reservation Act – guaranteeing 33 per cent representation in Parliament and state assemblies, to be operationalised – is the most significant legislative commitment to gender parity. For Dalits, Adivasis, and Other Backward Classes, direct benefit transfers routed through Jan Dhan accounts ensured that welfare spending reached intended recipients with a fidelity that earlier Governments had never achieved. The One Rank, One Pension (OROP) settlement – disbursing over Rs 1.24 lakh crore to former military personnel – brought long-overdue justice to veterans and their families.
On national security, the Government effected a doctrine shift of historic proportions. India’s default posture towards cross-border terrorism had long been one of protest and patience; the BJP replaced it with a policy of credible and demonstrable consequences. The surgical strikes of September 2016 signalled that the era of asymmetric tolerance was over. Operation Sindoor in 2025 – targeting terror infrastructure deep within Pakistani territory – consolidated a strategic posture in which India reserves the right to act wherever the threat originates. The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019 integrated Jammu and Kashmir fully into the constitutional fabric of the republic, removing a structural anomaly that had persisted for seven decades.
The COVID-19 pandemic tested every Government on earth. India’s initial lockdown caused acute hardship for migrant workers, yet the recovery arc was remarkable. India launched one of the largest vaccination programmes in human history, administering over two billion doses under the CoWIN platform. The domestic production of Covaxin was an early vindication of indigenous manufacturing capacity. Vaccine Maitri, which supplied doses to over 90 countries, recast India’s global image from that of a recipient of aid to a provider of it.
The border crisis with China – which came to a head at Galwan Valley – exposed strategic vulnerabilities and the Government’s resolve to meet them. The banning of Chinese applications, restrictions on Chinese investment, and accelerated border infrastructure construction constituted a clear-eyed multi-dimensional response. Simultaneously, the Make in India initiative, reinforced by production-linked incentive schemes across fourteen sectors, bore fruit: India became a credible global destination for semiconductor assembly, defence manufacturing, electronics, and pharmaceuticals. For renewable energy, India’s ambitions have been extraordinary. From barely 35 gigawatts of non-hydro renewable capacity in 2014, the country scaled to well over 200 gigawatts, becoming the world’s third-largest solar producer. The International Solar Alliance repositioned India as a global climate leader.
India in 2026 is not the India of 2014. The poor are more connected to the state than ever before. Its women have secured rights long deferred. Its strategic posture commands respect. Its economy is building productive capacity rather than merely consuming it. Transformative governance is never without cost; what matters is whether the direction of travel is right.
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