In October 2001, Narendra Modi entered the national political consciousness as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Twenty-five years later, after serving Gujarat and then leading India as Prime Minister since May 2014, his public journey can be viewed through a simple but powerful question: what does governance mean to the ordinary citizen who has waited for generations for the most basic necessities of life?
The effort has been to take long-standing challenges and address them through programmes designed for scale. Jan Dhan sought to bring the unbanked into the formal financial system. Ujjwala sought to provide clean cooking fuel to women from poorer households. Swachh Bharat placed sanitation at the centre of public policy and public participation. Housing programmes sought to provide families with the dignity and security of a permanent home. Electrification initiatives focused on bringing electricity to households that had remained without reliable access. Jal Jeevan Mission has sought to extend piped drinking water to rural homes. Technology has further changed the delivery of welfare. Direct Benefit Transfer and digital public infrastructure have enabled government assistance to reach beneficiaries more directly. India’s digital payments ecosystem has demonstrated how technology can become an instrument of inclusion and opportunity. Yet the larger significance of twenty-five years lies in the persistence of a particular approach: identify a problem, bring it into the national policy framework, deploy administrative capacity and technology, and attempt to take the solution to the last mile. It is found in the life of the last citizen standing at the end of the queue—and government efforts in finally reaching him. Sidharth Nath Singh is Prayagraj MLA and a former UP cabinet minister.
Because ultimately, the measure of governance is not only found in government buildings or policy documents.
