Eleven years after Narendra Modi’s rise in 2014, with promises of “Achhe Din†and a transformed India, the nation stands at a crossroads. Expectations of a global powerhouse and inclusive democracy have been replaced by broken promises, manipulated data, and a Government obsessed with optics over outcomes. Governance has become a performance, announcements eclipse achievements, and the nation has plunged into a crisis of credibility.
Modi’s legacy hinges on poor economic decisions. Demonetisation, announced in November 2016, was a disruptive failure. With 99.3 per cent of demonetised currency returning to banks, it missed its goal of curbing black money. On the contrary, the cash crunch obliterated 9.5 million informal-sector jobs, with 4.77 crore workers.
The Goods and Services Tax (GST), launched in July 2017, aimed to unify taxation but stumbled due to complexity. Its multi-rate structure, technical glitches, and exclusion of fuel and real estate burden small businesses and consumers.
The March 2020 COVID lockdown triggered an economic and humanitarian crisis. With workplaces shuttered, 12.2 crore Indians lost jobs in April 2020, per CMIE. Migrant workers faced income loss, food shortages, and uncertainty, exacerbated by inadequate Government support. This, accompanied by the mismanagement in the health sector that caused widespread deaths, deepened distress and eroded trust, as the Government prioritised narrative control over relief.
Since 2014, the Government has also prioritised revenue over reform through aggressive privatisation like Air India’s sale, the LIC IPO, and attempts to privatise BPCL and CONCOR. The National Monetisation Pipeline, leasing `6 lakh crore in public infrastructure, raises concerns about transparency, cronyism, and loss of public control. This approach sidelines jobs, equity, and accountability, deepening economic inequality.
Simultaneously, India’s employment crisis is dire, with less than half of its 95 crore working-age population employed, far below the 70 per cent average of ‘Asian Tiger’ economies. Many are self-employed or in unpaid family work, masking underemployment. Only 32.7 per cent of working-age women were employed in 2023, and just half of college graduates are employable. Over 10 crore youth are NEET, per ILO, with educated unemployed youth rising from 35 per cent in 2000 to 66 per cent in 2022. Unfilled Government vacancies and the Agnipath scheme’s unpopularity among armed forces aspirants has fueled discontent.
The most chilling impact of the BJP, however, is their communalisation of public life. Through dog-whistle rhetoric, anti-Muslim laws like the CAA-NRC, the party has normalised religious discrimination. Hate speech by BJP leaders is ignored, while Muslim representation in public life has sharply declined. Festivals and law enforcement are weaponised to portray Muslims as threats, and pro-BJP media amplifies fear and misinformation. The 2020 riots killing 53 in the national capital, lynching of Muslims in various states, and divisive tactics like love-jihad have exposed the ruling party’s hateful politics. Yogi Adityanath’s “Bulldozer Raj†in UP has unleashed a governance model marked by extrajudicial demolitions and collective punishment, often targeting Muslims, Dalits, and political dissenters. This deliberate strategy has entrenched everyday communalism, eroding India’s secular and constitutional foundations.
The farm laws, passed without debate, sparked massive protests, resulting in the death of 700 farmers. The Government labeled peaceful protesters as “anti-national†and “Khalistani†in a bid to discredit the movement. The Government eventually did repeal the laws under pressure but still failed to alleviate concerns about MSP or compensation.
High-profile rape cases like Hathras, Kathua and Unnao highlight failures to protect women. Women wrestlers accusing a BJP MP of harassment found no justice, nor did trailblasers like Colonel Sofia Qureshi, facing tokenism. Caste-based violence — from the Dangawas lynching to Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi’s suicides — reveals systemic rot that this Government has refused to rectify. The murder of Dalit child Indra Meghwal for touching a water pot underscores persistent caste hierarchies. Low conviction rates and prolonged impunity to perpetrators expose the Government’s complicity.
Since 2014, India — once celebrated as the world’s largest democracy — has witnessed a steady erosion of its democratic institutions. Constitutional checks have weakened, institutions have been co-opted, and dissent has been increasingly criminalised, marking a sharp turn towards electoral authoritarianism.
Civil liberties have declined since 2014. Freedom House rated India “Partly Free,†and V-Dem calls it an “electoral autocracy.†The 2025 World Press Freedom Index ranks India 151st of 180, citing journalist harassment. The ED registered 193 cases against political leaders from 2015 to 2025, with 95 per cent of CBI probes targeting opposition figures. The NIA’s questionable evidence in Bhima Koregaon, coupled with low UAPA (3 per cent) and PMLA (0.4 per cent) conviction rates, shows detention over justice. Over 20,600 NGO licenses, including Amnesty International’s, were canceled under FCRA, silencing dissent. Far from being a neutral arbiter, the ECI is increasingly seen as an enabler of electoral authoritarianism under the Modi regime. The Electoral Bonds scheme, introduced in 2018, legalised secret corporate funding. The BJP received `6,060 crore — nearly 48 per cent of all bonds — before the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional on February 15, 2024, for violating voters’ rights and enabling quid pro quo. The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, the absolute media and communications blackout and legal changes that promised peace have failed to deliver. Militancy persists, economic growth lags, and Ladakhis demand statehood amid marginalisation fears, highlighting political disempowerment. Simultaneously, the Government has categorically failed to secure Jammu and Kashmir despite its chest-thumping posture. Security failures like Pathankot (7 killed), Uri (19 soldiers), Amarnath Yatra (8 civilians), Pulwama (40 jawans), and recent Pahalgam attacks (26 civilians) highlight intelligence lapses and the incapacity of this Government to pre-empt, identify and prevent such threats. Modi’s inconsistent Pakistan policy, from visits to airstrikes, lacks coherence, and is failing to curb cross-border threats.
The Manipur crisis, starting May 2023, with Meitei-Kuki clashes, claimed over 250 lives and displaced 60,000. Modi’s indifference and Amit Shah’s inaction, backing a discredited chief minister, has orphaned an entire state.
Beyond the domestic wreckage Modi has presided over, his foreign policy record is another can of worms that demands detailed scrutiny. But even a cursory look exposes the regime’s incompetence. The 2017 Doklam standoff allowed China to entrench its presence. The 2020 Galwan clash, killing 20 Indian soldiers, saw China seise LAC territory. The China-Pakistan axis has deepened militarily and diplomatically, with China shielding Pakistan-based terror groups and blocking India’s efforts at the UN.
Since Modi’s arrival in Delhi, India has lost ground in its immediate neighbourhood, with countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Bangladesh drawing closer to China through infrastructure and defense partnerships. Modi’s downplaying of the crisis prioritised optics over accountability. In the process, he exposed the flaws in their approach towards maintaining India’s global standing and integrity.
This list is far from exhaustive and only highlights the most visible cracks in a much deeper collapse. Eleven years on, the Modi era has laid bare a governing philosophy that substitutes spectacle for substance, control for care, and division for development. What began as a promise of transformation has instead hollowed out the republic - from its economy and institutions to its social fabric and moral compass. From Kashmir to Manipur, from Dalits to wrestlers, to youth, to farmers and the crores of marginalised Indians, the cry for justice has met only criminal indifference.
Modi promised Achche Din. He delivered a democracy in retreat.
(The writer is Chairman, Media & Publicity Department, AICC. Member, Congress Working Committee)
