• Dr. Anup Kumar Srivastava

On the 26th of May, 2014, a man from Vadnagar stood before the nation and made a promise. Not one promise — many. Two crore jobs every year, for starters. Black money returned from Swiss banks. Corruption wiped out. Farmers' incomes doubled. Minimum government, maximum governance. A new India, gleaming and just, rising to take its rightful place among the world's great nations. The slogan was simple and seductive: “Achhe Din Aane Waale Hain.” Good days are coming.

Twelve years on, Narendra Modi stands as India's longest-serving non-Congress Prime Minister. But for countless citizens struggling with unemployment, inflation, and inequality, the promised "Achhe Din" have remained more slogan than reality.

This is not the full story, of course — it never is with a government of this scale and ambition. Roads have been built (with heavy toll taxes). Toilets have been constructed. A handful of welfare schemes have genuinely reached the poor. India's profile on the world stage has grown louder. But the measure of any government is not merely what it built — it is what it promised, what it squandered, who it helped, and who it quietly left behind. And when you hold those promises up against the reality most Indians wake up to every morning, the gap is not just wide. It is staggering.

The Jobs That Never Came

Let us start where the pain is most personal: Employment. In 2014, the BJP's Election Manifesto promised two crore — twenty million — jobs every year. Over twelve years, that would amount to 240 million new jobs, enough to transform the economic fate of an entire generation. Instead, what India got was a youth unemployment rate hovering near ten percent for those between 15 and 29 years old, a manufacturing sector that stubbornly refused to grow its share of the workforce, and a graduate class that found itself either unemployed or drastically underemployed.

The flagship programme meant to fix this was ‘Make in India’, launched with great fanfare in September 2014. The idea was elegant: attract global manufacturers, build domestic capacity, create millions of jobs on factory floors. But a decade on, the share of manufacturing in India's workforce actually declined — from 12.6 percent in 2011–12 to 11.6 percent in 2021–22. Even sympathisers of trickle-down economics privately concede that the reliance on capital expenditure has not borne the fruit that was promised.

The Hunger That Infrastructure Cannot Feed

India, the government likes to remind us, is the world's fourth largest economy. And it is true that GDP numbers have grown, that highways now stretch further, that airports have multiplied from 74 in 2014 to over a hundred today. These are real achievements, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But GDP is an average, and averages hide a great deal.

The government itself boasts of providing free food rations to more than 80 crore — 800 million — Indians. Think about what that number means. It is not a development achievement to celebrate; it is a confession. It means that more than half the population of the world's fourth largest economy cannot reliably feed itself without government support. And even with that support, malnutrition has not retreated in any meaningful way.

Farmers — the annadatas, the givers of food, whom this government has celebrated in speech after speech — have found the gap between promise and reality particularly brutal.

The Democracy That Shrank

Perhaps the most consequential and least easily reversible damage of these twelve years has been to India's democratic institutions. The numbers here are not abstract. Freedom House, which measures political rights and civil liberties across the world, has recorded a 14-point drop in India's score since 2005, enough to reclassify the country from "Free" to "Partly Free." Democracy-watching organisations across the political spectrum now describe India as a hybrid regime — part democracy, part something else.

The press has been a particular casualty. Ownership has concentrated steadily in the hands of conglomerates with interests that align with government patronage. Journalists who ask the wrong questions face harassment, sedition charges, and in some cases arrest under laws so broad that virtually any critical reporting can be framed as a threat to national security. The institutions that are supposed to function as checks on executive power have come under sustained pressure. Questions have been raised about the autonomy of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Election Commission, and the judiciary's ability to resist executive influence on appointments. Opposition-ruled state governments have complained — credibly and repeatedly — that investigative agencies are selectively deployed against political opponents while ignoring serious allegations against those allied with the ruling party. The term ‘Washing Machine’ has entered Indian political vocabulary to describe the pattern whereby politicians facing corruption charges seem to have those cases go quiet upon joining the BJP. Minority communities — particularly Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis — have experienced twelve years of mounting anxiety.

The Branding of a Nation

What has arguably been most expertly managed in these twelve years is not policy — it is perception. The Modi government has revolutionised political communication in India, using social media, centralised messaging, celebrity endorsements, and the sheer force of one man's personality to construct a narrative of national achievement that has often outrun the evidence. Failures are attributed to previous governments, to global headwinds, to state governments run by the opposition. Successes — however modest, however contested — are branded, packaged, and amplified through a machinery that dwarfs anything Indian politics has seen before.

The deadlines have moved quietly and without much scrutiny. The two crore jobs per year? Forgotten. Doubling farmer incomes by 2022? The year passed without reckoning. Recovery of black money from abroad? Barely mentioned now. The new deadline is 2047 — Viksit Bharat.

This is the art form the government has truly mastered: the perpetually deferred promise. The horizon is always there, always beckoning, always just out of reach. Diplomacy Then and Now: Has India's Voice Grown Softer?

In June 2026, the attack on the merchant tanker Jalveer in the Gulf of Oman reignited an uncomfortable debate about India's foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The vessel, carrying twenty-four Indian crew members, was allegedly targeted by American forces after accusations that it had violated restrictions related to Iranian ports. Three Indian sailors lost their lives. While India's Ministry of External Affairs condemned the incident and coordinated with Omani authorities, critics noted a conspicuous omission: the official statement did not explicitly identify the attacker.

This omission became the focal point of public criticism. Journalists, diplomats, and social media commentators questioned why the government appeared reluctant to directly name the United States despite the loss of Indian lives. The controversy quickly evolved into a broader discussion about whether India today responds to powerful nations with the same assertiveness that it once displayed.

Many observers drew comparisons with the 2013 Devyani Khobragade episode, one of the most contentious diplomatic confrontations between India and the United States in recent decades. Khobragade, then India's Deputy Consul General in New York, was arrested on charges related to visa documentation and employment conditions for her domestic worker. The arrest became a diplomatic storm when reports emerged that she had been subjected to a strip search and treated like a common criminal despite her diplomatic status.

The response of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was swift and unusually forceful. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh publicly criticized the manner in which the United States handled the matter. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid reportedly refused communication with senior American officials until concerns were addressed. The U.S. Ambassador to India was summoned, Parliament united in protest, and New Delhi took several retaliatory measures. Security barriers outside the American Embassy were removed, diplomatic privileges were reviewed, and Indian Authorities initiated scrutiny of the employment practices of U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in India.

What made the episode remarkable was the rare display of political unity. Leaders across party lines condemned the treatment of the Indian diplomat. Even Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat and the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, reportedly declined to meet an American delegation as a mark of protest. The message was clear: national dignity transcended political divisions.

The Khobragade affair also raised important questions about international law. As a member of India's delegation to the United Nations, she was entitled to protections under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. India argued that the procedures followed by U.S. authorities violated both diplomatic norms and the spirit of bilateral relations. Although the United States never issued a formal apology, India maintained a firm diplomatic posture and demanded accountability.

The comparison between 2013 and 2026 is politically significant because it reflects a larger concern regarding India's evolving foreign policy. The deaths of three Indian sailors aboard the Jalveer may not be directly comparable to the arrest of a diplomat, yet the contrasting governmental responses have fueled a perception that India's diplomatic assertiveness has become selective. The central question raised by critics is not merely who was responsible for the attack, but whether the Indian government today is willing to confront powerful allies with the same determination it once demanded from others.

In the end, diplomacy is judged not only by grand summits and strategic partnerships but also by how a nation responds when its citizens are harmed. The debate sparked by the Jalveer incident suggests that for many Indians, the issue is not simply foreign policy—it is a question of national dignity, consistency, and the credibility of leadership. What Twelve Years Tells Us

None of this is to say that India has not changed in twelve years — it has, in significant ways, some of them genuinely positive. The ‘Jan Dhan’ financial inclusion programme brought millions into the banking system for the first time. The vaccination drive during the pandemic was an extraordinary logistical achievement. Infrastructure spending has been real, even if the economic returns remain debated. India's diplomatic weight in global forums has grown.

But a government that promised revolutionary change — that asked for sixty months and then kept asking — must be judged by its own standard. And by that standard, the verdict is uncomfortable.Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Inequality has widened, not narrowed. Democratic norms have been eroded, not strengthened. Press freedom has contracted. Minorities have been made to feel like second-class citizens in their own country. Farmers continue to die by suicide in numbers that should shame any government. And the infrastructure of social trust — the sense that institutions exist to serve all citizens equally — has been quietly corroded.

India is a country of extraordinary resilience, extraordinary potential, and extraordinary patience. Its people have absorbed shock after shock — demonetisation, a botched pandemic response, a cooling economy — with a stoicism that is sometimes mistaken for consent. But stoicism is not the same as satisfaction, and patience is not the same as amnesia. Twelve years is long enough to build something. It is also long enough to know whether what was built serves everyone — or only those close enough to the light.

(The author is freelance writer and trainer, brings rich insights into the intersection of finance and economics through his research & writing with a strong background in business studies & corporate analysis.)