Rewriting the India Story

PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI’S REMARKS against aarthic swarth (economic selfishness) by the US in his Red Fort address on Independence Day cannot be seen in isolation. Modi’s words are closely tied to the agenda he has pursued since coming to power in 2014—driving growth and lifting millions out of poverty by creating conditions for entrepreneurship across socio-economic groups and genders, alongside judicious welfare measures. His confidence stems from the trust he commands among the masses, having improved both the ease of doing busi­ness and the ease of living for the majority of Indians. A closer scrutiny shows that he has achieved this by cutting the Gordian knot of past policies long entangled in ideology, inertia, expedi­ency, or a combination of all three.

For naysayers and trenchant critics of Modi, the response came in the form of a recent upgrade by global ratings agency S&P which lifted India’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in nearly two decades, from BBB- to BBB with a stable outlook. The move effectively invalidated US President Donald Trump’s preposterous claim that “India is a dead economy” and his expectation that his aggressive stance towards India would force New Delhi to cave. In fact, S&P also placed India “among the best-performing economies” for its 8.8 per cent real average GDP growth from FY22 to FY24, and noted that the country made huge strides despite global monetary uncertainty in a post-Covid world and the geopolitical shocks of wars in Ukraine and West Asia.

The finance ministry was quick to describe S&P’s upgrade as recognition of India’s leader­ship, which it said had prioritised fiscal consolidation while sustaining a strong infrastruc­ture push and an inclusive growth agenda. It also pledged further reforms to achieve the long-term goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047. Trump, meanwhile, slapped a 50 per cent duty on Indian imports—half, he said, because India was “a very big abuser of tariffs”, and the other half in retaliation for its continued purchase of Russian crude oil.

In that context, Modi’s defiant address on August 15 stood out from those of his predeces­sors. He placed self-reliance at the centre under the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, urging the youth, scientists and government departments to develop indigenous technologies. The successes of Operation Sindoor and the Make in India drive, he said, were evidence of the nation’s capacity. He also reaffirmed his commitment to protecting farmers, even as Wash­ington pressed Delhi to open its agricultural market.

Among the new policy signals, Modi hinted at a major reform in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and announced the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PM-VBRY). With an outlay of ₹1 lakh crore, the scheme aims to generate 3.5 crore jobs for young people and rovide each with ₹15,000 on securing their first employment.

That this was Modi’s 12th consecutive Independence Day speech—surpassing Indira Gandhi’s record of 11—was inci­dental. What mattered more was the message: Modi positioning himself as the leader who could decisively steer India away from the ghosts of the past no matter what the international pressures were. It is, therefore, not difficult to comprehend where he draws moral courage from to stand up to the world’s biggest economy and military power.

BREAKING THE HABIT

The achievements on Modi’s watch are for all to see as he hooked public-sector as well as corporate players to the growth bandwagon, in sharp contrast to earlier Indian leaders who had tapped national enterprise with great reluctance. In just over a decade, Modi has steered India to becoming the world’s fourth-largest economy.  International investors, from Wall Street giants to London brokers like Jefferies’ Christopher Wood, are excited about its growth prospects. His government’s resolve has brought India’s banking system to an all-time low in non-performing International investors, from Wall Street giants to London brokers like Jefferies’ Christopher Wood, are excited about its growth prospects. His government’s resolve has brought India’s banking system to an all-time low in non-performing assets (NPAs) while forex reserves have touched historic highs, signs of resilience few economies can match.

Behind the numbers lies a transformation rooted in both as­piration and pragmatism. The Make in India push has reshaped sectors from defence manufacturing to information technology (IT), creating global champions while nurturing local enterprise. The country’s startup ecosystem, home to dozens of unicorns and creator economy ventures, stands as a symbol of innovation, while pharma exports, blue economy initiatives, and the solar al­liance leadership demonstrate India’s global footprint in critical 21st-century sectors. The Modi years have also been marked by structural reforms: sweeping GST cuts to spur consumption, a 12.75 per cent income tax exemption for the middle class, and an eight-year low in inflation, all creating room for ordinary Indians to dream bigger. At the grassroots, over 25 crore people have been lifted out of poverty, while 80 crore citizens receive free rations, buying the country vital time to consolidate a neo-middle class. India’s development story today is visible not just on balance sheets but in infra corridors, modernised railroads, airports, and assured drinking water supply reaching millions. It is a coun­try in motion, paved roads leading to digital highways. Modi’s New India radiates soaring ambition. The project is no longer survival or stability; it is about becoming the centrepiece of the global growth story.

INHERITANCE OF LOSS

What he inherited was not an India that looked particularly rosy, for obvious reasons. According to economist Kunal Sen, in an article published in May 2024, if one goes by economic growth figures, the Modi government’s performance has been impres­sive: “When Modi came to power in 2014, economic growth was sluggish. A series of high-profile corruption cases had led to a loss of investor confidence in the Indian economy.

But between 2014 and 2022, India’s gross domestic prod­uct (GDP) per capita (a measure of income per head) rose from US$5,000 (£4,000) to over US$7,000—an increase of roughly 40% in eight years. These calculations use purchasing power parity, a way of comparing general purchasing power over time and between countries.”

This July, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised its forecast for India’s economic growth to 6.4 per cent for both 2025 and 2026. Earlier, in its April 2025 World Economic Outlook, IMF had projected GDP growth at 6.2 per cent for 2025 and 6.3 per cent for 2026. The upward revision was attributed to a more benign external environment than anticipated. By comparison, China is forecast to grow at 4.8 per cent in 2025 and 4.2 per cent in 2026, while the US is expected to expand by 1.9 per cent in 2025 and 2 per cent in 2026.

Even a limited war with Pakistan did not hurt the economy. On the contrary, the conflict spurred demand for Indian-made defence equipment, including missiles, and became an occa­sion to showcase India’s military prowess to the world—driving up global sales. Open had reported earlier that stocks of Indian defence companies listed on the markets have seen marked growth thanks to Operation Sindoor. The company ideaForge Technology, which provided surveillance drones to the Army, saw its share prices soar. Paras Defence & Space Technologies, which supplied both surveillance and kamikaze drones, also saw significant gains. Other companies that performed strongly on the market include Solar Industries India Limited (developer of the Nagastra 1R loitering munition, a night-capable drone tested in key regions) and Adani Enterprises (through its subsidiary Adani Defence & Aerospace, which deployed SkyStriker kami­kaze drones and anti-drone defences during Operation Sindoor), among others.

Other firms that attracted global attention included Tata Advanced Systems, Asteria, Raphe, and Adani Alpha Design— all offering a full suite of weaponry ranging from loitering munitions and surveillance UAVs to drone swarms and logistics support systems.

The private sector now contributes about 21 per cent of overall defence production. Among public-sector undertakings (PSUs), major players include Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics, BEL Optronic Devices, Bharat Dynamics, BEML, Mishra Dhatu Nigam, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers, Goa Shipyard, Hindustan Shipyard, Gliders India, Troop Comforts, Armoured Vehicles Nigam, Munitions India, Yantra India, Cochin Shipyard, and India Optel. In the private sector, key companies include the Adani Group, Reliance, Bharat Forge, Mahindra, Tata Group, L&T India, and Punj Lloyd. Interestingly, India’s defence exports range from arms, ammunition and fuses to complete weapons systems. Indian firms are exporting advanced platforms such as the BrahMos missile and the Dornier-228 aircraft.

What also helped was the adoption of an inflation-targeting framework in 2016 and the introduction of GST in 2017 which replaced a maze of indirect taxes, ensuring greater economic inte­gration and tax reform. The upcoming GST reforms are expected to reduce the tax burden further.

There has also been a tremendous infrastructure push over the last 11 years: from 14km of road construction per day in 2014 the figure now stands at over 34km per day, reflecting India’s rising prowess in infrastructural development. India also emerged as ‘Vishwamitra’—the pharmacy of the world during Covid—sup­plying medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines to several countries. This demonstrated the country’s capability and resilience as well as its resolve to weather any storm.

UNTIRING EFFORTS

Relentless in his pursuit, the prime minister has set an audacious economic goal for 2047. Starting with Swachh Bharat in 2014 to Naya Bharat today, his priorities have shifted towards self-reliance, innovation, and citizen empowerment in 2025. Tariff threats from abroad, incidentally, are giving India the opportunity to look towards emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Africa offers vast opportunities in infrastruc­ture, agriculture, and energy collaboration. Economists argue that India’s Act East Policy will help expand exports in apparel and electronics. ASEAN nations, with dynamic consumer mar­kets, present opportunities for Indian textiles, pharmaceuticals, and machinery.

The UK, the European Union (EU), and Australia are new avenues where India is already engaged in talks, with a free trade agreement (FTA) now signed with the UK. By pursuing South- South cooperation, India aims to position itself as a global sup­plier beyond the West, a reality that may disappoint those bank­ing on headline diplomacy alone.

India, meanwhile, has also announced ambitious plans in semiconductor manufacturing. The government has declared that the first indigenous semiconductor chip will be ready for production this year. Since the Union Cabinet approved the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), with a ₹76,000 crore outlay to boost fabrication, design, and manufacturing, five production units are currently under construction, signalling a significant milestone for domestic capability.

According to the Centre, from 2023 to 2025, a total of 10 projects under ISM have been approved, with cumulative invest­ments of around ₹1.6 lakh crore across six states. India has already built centres for advanced 3-nanometer chip design in Noida and Bengaluru. The government has announced that India is moving from traditional silicon-based semiconductors to the latest silicon carbide–based technologies.

India is also the world’s third-largest solar energy producer, having doubled its solar manufacturing capacity and achieved its COP26 renewable targets five years ahead of schedule. Renewables now power over 50 per cent of India’s total capacity.

India had recognised the importance of semiconductors ear­lier than most others—even Taiwan. As early as 1983, it had set up the Semi-Conductor Laboratory in Mohali, though a fire later destroyed its main production pipeline.

The country has gained on multiple fronts. For instance, its for­eign exchange reserves rose by $4.747 billion in the week ending August 8 to reach $693.618 billion, driven by gains in both foreign currency assets and gold holdings, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

LEGACIES UNRESOLVED

From the pharma laboratories of Hyderabad to the fintech hubs of Bengaluru, from coastal blue economy projects to solar-powered villages, Modi’s India exudes an unrelenting drive. But the India of 1947 was vastly different, one shackled by a leader­ship that despised entrepreneurs and showed little interest in business. Priorities were misplaced.

None other than iconic industrialist JRD Tata, the late chairman of the Tata Group, who enjoyed good relations with Jawaharlal Nehru, had spoken of misplaced priorities at the top when it came to industry and in tapping into what the economist John Maynard Keynes had called “animal spirits” to create growth and more opportunities.

As with meeting Nehru to discuss what industry could do for the country, JRD Tata once said in an interview, “I tried. I admired him. He liked me. I would go and see him… I would try to bring the conversation to economics, nationalisation, bureaucracy, he was not only not interested but he wasn’t even willing to talk… he had invented a little trick… if we sat near each other and there was a window not too far… the moment I (said something) he would turn around and look out of the window and I got the mes­sage.” He also said, “[I]f Vallabh Bhai (Patel) would have become the prime minister of India, certainly the economic plan… there would have been a totally different situation than the one that exists today.” JRD Tata died in 1993.

While Nehru was a socialist who followed the footsteps of Soviet policies, various economists worldwide had advised him to work towards generating growth to finance welfare programmes and to lift millions out of poverty. In his book The Nehru-Era Economic History and Thought & Their Lasting Impact, economist Arvind Panagariya, currently chancellor of Nalanda University, writes about the dominant thinking of the time that prevented clearer industrial policy: “In retrospect, the develop­ment strategy Nehru adopted had serious flaws. Before we turn to a systematic dissection of these flaws, a pertinent question is whether there is a plausible scenario under which India could have opted for an alternative strategy. The answer to this ques­tion is unequivocally negative.”

He explains why: “Several foreign statisticians and economists visited India during the winter of 1954-55. They were predomi­nantly left-leaning and often admirers of the Soviet model. They naturally endorsed the development model underlying the Draft Plan-frame.” He also points out that PC Mahalanobis, the statisti­cian and scientist who was a member of the Planning Commis­sion and contributed prominently to free India’s five-year plans starting with the second, “fully shared Nehru’s enthusiasm for as­signing the public sector the key role in the development of heavy industries”. At that time, however, Panagariya writes, “econo­mists from the Bombay School of Economics had submitted as many as six out of thirty-three papers by the Panel of Economists. Three of these papers expressed clear and important differences with the Draft Plan-frame.” He also concludes that “the only clear and comprehensive critique of the Nehru Model in 1955 came from Milton Friedman. In a memorandum containing less than 5000 words, he pointed a finger at nearly every single flaw in the model. But, alas, at the time, the ideas of Friedman were yet to gain wide acceptance even within the United States. As such, the prospects of their acceptance in the India of the time, so heavily dominated by Nehru and his followers, were nil.”

It must be remembered that Lenin himself had reminded his followers in a report, while pushing for the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 to revive the Russian economy, that “Communists do not know how to run the economy and, in that respect, are inferior to the ordinary capitalist salesmen, who have received their training in big factories and big firms. But we refuse to admit this; in this field communist conceit—komchvanstvo, to use the great Russian language again—still persists. The whole point is that the responsible Communists, even the best of them, who are unquestionably honest and loyal, who in the old days suffered penal servitude and did not fear death, do not know how to trade, because they are not businessmen, they have not learnt to trade, do not want to learn and do not understand that they must start learning from the beginning.”

Lenin’s follower Stalin discontinued the experiment to encourage entrepreneurs to rev up the economy. And Nehru followed that model.

Political expediency came in the way of most prime ministers who succeeded Nehru, including Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, who were keen to please parties that championed socialism and treated the private sector as the enemy. PV Narasimha Rao, despite kick-starting reforms in a major way and globalising the Indian economy, also faced similar challenges. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who first started putting India back on the track towards faster growth thanks to his thrust on infrastructure development through public-private partnerships and in creating a situation for entrepreneurs to thrive.

Then came the wasted years of the Manmohan Singh-led coalition—UPA I and UPA 2—that put reforms in cold storage, notwithstanding the favourable global situation when accessing capital was much easier. By the time Modi came to power in 2014, the world had already been through a major economic meltdown and the situation was getting tougher for corporations to avail loans from international banks.

Regardless, Modi placed great emphasis on both growth-oriented policies and ensuring that people, especially the poor, had access to basic services. For example, through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a flagship scheme launched to make clean cooking fuel such as LPG available to rural and de­prived households otherwise dependent on firewood and coal, he showed how growth and human development can go hand-in-hand. While industrialising fast, Modi also emphasised roads, railways, airports, water, housing, and sanitation. Alongside, he ensured that rural folk gained access to bank accounts and made transactions far less cumbersome through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system developed by the National Payments Cor­poration of India (NPCI) in 2016. Back then, several opposition leaders, including former Union Minister P Chidambaram, had questioned whether villagers would use UPI instead of cash for financial transactions. Much to their dismay, it has now become a reality and a model for the world, even in remote locations.

DEMOCRATISING TECHNOLOGY

A State Bank of India (SBI) report said recently that in terms of value, average daily UPI transactions rose from ₹75,743 crore in January 2025 to 8₹0,919 crore in July 2025. The momentum further accelerated in August (to date), with the average daily value touching ₹90,446 crore, according to the report. The UPI experiment is being closely studied by policymakers and academ­ics alike across the globe.

Such programmes were followed by measures to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) flourish and to boost consumption. No segment of the economy was left untouched by Modi’s comprehensive schemes. This included, for example, the popularisation of khadi as well as homegrown products, all of which clicked.

Alongside, the Modi government in 2016 introduced the In­solvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) which has since played a crucial role in reshaping India’s insolvency framework, resolving issues of financially stressed companies that would have oth­erwise gone belly-up. Remarkably, Modi refused to rest on past laurels and expanded outreach to newer markets to grow India’s trade relationships. That he won high honours in 27 countries is seen as recognition of his statesmanship and the enthusiasm of those nations to expand ties with India.

Going back to chipmaking and other technology-focused manufacturing, Modi decided to rebuild what had been lost, for instance, after the Mohali fire. Chris Miller, author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, had told Open earlier that in the semiconductor sweepstakes, he is bet­ting big on India. “I am bullish about India’s prospects in the field,” he had said.

A closer look at Modi’s flagship programmes and priorities shows that he has had the disadvantage of correcting the mis­takes of the past, yet he remains untiring in placing India on the centrestage of global politics. His convictions have often been misunderstood as overconfidence, much to the disadvantage of those who underestimated him. He is not interested in the com­petition that some countries pursue to maintain their hegemony, but rather in growing together and coexisting.

Modi’s Red Fort address, delivered at a time when India faces intimidating tactics from the powerful, stood as a testament to his wisdom and tenacity. “I am not saying we need to increase our strength to cut someone to size. We need to draw a longer line; only then will the world accept our strength,” the prime minister declared. Even for an orator as skilled as Modi, his governmental initiatives encapsulate the vision of a leader who acts on his own terms, meets challenges head-on, and lets his actions speak louder than his words.

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