As PM Modi Turns 75: A Look At His Governance Model Built On Schemes, Scale And Delivery

Last Updated:September 16, 2025, 13:20 IST

From clean fuel and sanitation to digital finance and semiconductors, PM Modi’s governance model has been defined by delivery at scale

PM Modi will turn 75 on September 17, 2025. (Image: PTI File)

On September 17, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi turns 75. Eleven years into his tenure, the political brand he has built rests on one central idea: delivery. Welfare schemes rolled out at scale, digital platforms designed to cut out leakages, and a decisive push into frontier technologies like semiconductors and artificial intelligence define what his supporters call “Modi ki guarantee." It is the assurance that a government scheme will reach the intended beneficiary, that middlemen will be cut out, and that welfare will be tied to dignity rather than charity.

This model has left its imprint in rural kitchens, in bank accounts across villages and towns, and in toilets built under a sanitation drive that redefined public health. At the same time, it is now extending into chip fabrication units, AI compute clusters and quantum labs, all tied to Modi’s larger promise of Viksit Bharat by 2047.

How Ujjwala Redefined Rural Kitchens

When the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) was launched in 2016, it was pitched as a direct intervention for women at the bottom of the economic ladder. Until then, crores of households relied on firewood, dung cakes and coal for cooking — fuels that were cheap but damaging to health, time-consuming to collect, and environmentally harmful. Ujjwala offered deposit-free LPG connections to women in poor households, making clean fuel both accessible and affordable.

The scale of rollout has been central to its impact. By March 2025, more than 10.3 crore connections had been provided. In its second phase, Ujjwala 2.0 relaxed eligibility norms, particularly for migrant families who often lacked formal proof-of-address documents. A simple self-declaration was enough, ensuring that mobility did not exclude them from access to subsidies.

Over time, the data points to deeper adoption. Average annual refill consumption among Ujjwala households, which was just over three cylinders in 2019–20, has risen to more than four in 2024–25. This suggests that LPG is no longer a one-off or backup fuel but has become a regular part of household cooking.

Just as significant is the way the scheme was integrated into the larger welfare delivery model. Subsidies are transferred directly into women’s Jan Dhan accounts, tying Ujjwala into the JAM trinity of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile. This direct benefit structure ensured that the subsidy reached the intended beneficiary without leakages, fulfilling the “Modi ki guarantee" claim of welfare without middlemen.

Jan Dhan: Building The Financial Backbone

When Modi announced the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in 2014, it was projected as the foundation of financial inclusion. In its first year, more than 17.9 crore accounts were opened. Eleven years later, that number has crossed 56 crore. More than half of these accounts belong to women, and two-thirds are in rural and semi-urban areas.

The scheme was not just about access to banking. Each account came with a RuPay debit card, accident insurance cover and access to micro-credit. Over time, Jan Dhan became the backbone of welfare delivery. By 2025, over 57 million account holders were receiving Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) into these accounts.

Average deposits per account have risen steadily: from Rs 1,279 in 2015 to Rs 4,076 in 2023. Public sector banks hold more than Rs 2.5 lakh crore in PMJDY deposits, followed by regional rural and private banks. DBT payments into these accounts have been central to plugging leakages. The government claims savings of more than Rs 3.4 lakh crore by removing fake beneficiaries across schemes.

The architecture of Jan Dhan, linked with Aadhaar and mobile phone,s also provided the platform for crisis-time interventions. During the Covid-19 lockdown, more than Rs 30,945 crore was credited directly into women’s PMJDY accounts under the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.

Swachh Bharat: A Sanitation Drive That Became A Mass Movement

Among Modi’s earliest flagship programmes, the Swachh Bharat Mission launched on Gandhi Jayanti 2014, was aimed at eliminating open defecation. In five years, government data claimed more than 11 crore toilets had been constructed, and rural sanitation coverage expanded dramatically.

Swachh Bharat was as much a behavioural campaign as a construction drive. Modi publicly wielded a broom, schools and offices organised cleanliness drives, and the programme became a recurring theme in his speeches. Its impact was measured not only in the number of toilets built but also in making sanitation a mainstream subject of public discussion.

For women, the availability of household toilets meant greater safety and dignity. For government, the mission became a case study in delivering visible outcomes at speed, while projecting an image of India modernising its public health infrastructure.

Digital India: From Aadhaar To UPI

Launched in 2015, Digital India has been the most ambitious governance transformation under Modi. Internet connections in India have grown from less than 250 million in 2014 to more than 970 million by 2025. The BharatNet project has laid more than 6.9 lakh kilometres of optical fibre, connecting over 2.1 lakh gram panchayats. Data costs have dropped from more than Rs 300 per GB in 2014 to under Rs 10, making access affordable for millions.

The building blocks of Digital India are visible across daily life:

• Aadhaar, with more than 140 crore IDs, is the world’s largest biometric identity system and underpins banking, subsidies and telecom.
• UPI, launched in 2016, now processes more than 19 billion transactions every month. In April 2025 alone, it recorded 1,867 crore transactions worth Rs 24.77 lakh crore. India accounts for nearly half the world’s real-time transactions, and UPI has expanded abroad to countries like Singapore, UAE, France and Mauritius.
• CoWIN managed the world’s largest Covid-19 vaccination drive, issuing more than 2.2 billion QR-verifiable certificates.
• DigiLocker has 540 million users and hosts 7.75 billion documents.
• e-Sanjeevani has provided more than 360 million tele-consultations.
• Government e-Marketplace (GeM) clocked Rs 1 lakh crore in GMV within 50 days of FY 2024–25.
• ONDC has crossed 200 million transactions, onboarding lakhs of small sellers.
• Account Aggregator (AA) framework has linked over 181 million consumer accounts, disbursing more than Rs 15,000 crore in loans each month through consent-based digital data sharing.

Digital India has also been projected abroad as a model. Platforms like India Stack are studied in Africa and South Asia, and during India’s G20 presidency, Modi pushed for a Global DPI Repository to help other nations adopt similar systems.

Semiconductors: From Missed Chances To Bold Push

India’s semiconductor sector was marked for decades by missed opportunities. From the 1960s through the early 2000s, companies like Fairchild and Intel explored investments, but delays and policy hurdles drove them elsewhere. Taiwan, South Korea and China built dominant positions in the global chip industry while India lagged.

The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), launched in 2021, is the current government’s attempt to change that history. Backed by a Rs 76,000 crore production-linked incentive scheme, ISM has already attracted pledges worth Rs 65,000 crore. New facilities are coming up in Gujarat and Odisha, and this year, ISRO unveiled the Vikram microprocessor, India’s first fully home-grown 32-bit chip designed for space applications.

CG Semi’s OSAT facility in Sanand, Gujarat, is set to produce the first commercial “Made in India" chips by 2026–27. At SEMICON India 2025, 12 MoUs were signed with global firms, including equipment suppliers like ASML, signalling industry confidence. The second phase of ISM will expand into raw materials and components to build a complete supply chain.

For Modi, semiconductors are not just an industry but a strategic asset — the chips that run communication systems, defence networks and space exploration. He has framed them as the 21st-century equivalent of nuclear energy: decisive for sovereignty and economic power.

Artificial Intelligence And Quantum: Building Future Readiness

Parallel to semiconductors, Modi has pushed for a national AI and quantum strategy. The IndiaAI Mission now offers 34,000 GPUs through a subsidised compute portal, with access costs at just Rs 67 per hour compared to global averages of $2.5–3. Data labs are being set up in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities to make AI education more accessible.

The National Quantum Mission aims to build intermediate-scale quantum computers of 50–1000 qubits within eight years and secure quantum communication networks. The National Supercomputing Mission has deployed 34 systems, including three new PARAM Rudra supercomputers in 2024, taking the total compute capacity to 35 petaflops.

Research spending has more than doubled since 2014, with new research parks, R&D cells in 6,000 institutions, and intellectual property filings crossing 80,000 annually. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) has been set up with a target corpus of Rs 50,000 crore, funding projects across universities and state institutions.

The vision is to move India from being a consumer of imported technology to being a producer and exporter of frontier technologies.

The Broader Governance Imprint

Beyond these flagship sectors, Modi’s governance brand has also been shaped by initiatives in infrastructure, healthcare and social protection:

• Ayushman Bharat has expanded health insurance to millions of poor households.
• PM Awas Yojana has added to rural and urban housing stock.
• Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched in 2015, addressed child sex ratios and girls’ education.
• Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala, and Jan Dhan together created a welfare architecture that linked dignity to delivery.

These schemes are presented as proof of what Modi calls “unprecedented decisions": policies aimed at reaching the last mile with scale and speed.

Modi At 75: A Governance Model Built On Delivery

As PM Narendra Modi turns 75, his brand of governance is defined not by a single reform but by a pattern: welfare designed for scale, delivery designed for speed, and innovation designed for future sovereignty.

The promise behind each scheme is the same: that what is announced will be delivered, and that delivery will be visible. Whether India reaches the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047 will depend on the continuation of this execution model. But as Modi steps into his 75th year, the imprint of his governance is already deeply embedded in India’s welfare systems, its digital economy, and its ambitions in future technologies.

Karishma Jain

Karishma Jain, Chief Sub Editor at News18.com, writes and edits opinion pieces on a variety of subjects, including Indian politics and policy, culture and the arts, technology and social change. Follow her @kar...Read More

Karishma Jain, Chief Sub Editor at News18.com, writes and edits opinion pieces on a variety of subjects, including Indian politics and policy, culture and the arts, technology and social change. Follow her @kar...

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