4 min readSep 5, 2026 06:45 AM IST First published on: Sep 5, 2026 at 06:45 AM ISTFour years ago, during his 76th Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the idea of Viksit Bharat for the first time. He gave a call for pancha prana — five pledges for the citizens of India, the first among which was the building of a developed India by the time the nation completes 100 years of its Independence in 2047. He called the 25-year road map amrit kaal. For the amrit kaal to succeed, citizens were called upon to take the other four pledges, too — freedom from the colonial mindset, pride in their own heritage, strengthening national integrity, and upholding civic responsibility.The PM’s vision was tall and daunting. NITI Aayog projected Viksit Bharat’s economic targets as achieving $15,000-18,000 per capita, five to six times the present levels, and taking the country’s GDP to $30 trillion, more than seven times the present level. For these targets to be achieved, the economy has to register a year-on-year GDP growth rate of at least 7 per cent for a long time. Only a few countries, such as China and Singapore, have been able to maintain such high growth rates for longer durations. But the Prime Minister is not a leader with empty dreams. Despite Covid and the global economic slowdown induced by it, despite US President Donald Trump’s tantrums that caused serious economic and trade upheavals, and despite raging fears of an impending major global recession, Modi persisted with his agenda.AdvertisementThe result was a steady above 7 per cent GDP growth of our economy in the past three years. While the rest of the world struggled, we recovered quickly from Covid-induced sluggishness to register 7.3 per cent growth in 2023-24, 7.2 per cent in 2024-25 and 7.8 per cent in 2025-26. The controversy over the growth figures of 7.8 per cent for the first quarter of 2026-27 is petty and pessimistic given this track record.In his Independence Day address this year, the Prime Minister continued his emphasis on Viksit Bharat by highlighting seven priorities, the sapta dhara — seven streams of the development agenda: Manufacturing power, agriculture and food processing, technology and innovation, infrastructure and connectivity, self-reliance in defence production, green and blue economy, and soft power. The Prime Minister underscored the need to reorient our approach in order to achieve newer heights in these key sectors. “We have to change our work culture… we also have to change our thinking… We also have to accelerate the pace of reform,” he insisted.Historical transformations are rarely linear. Modi expressed a similar sentiment, saying, “the pace of work that was not achieved in five to seven decades, we have to achieve in the coming five to seven years”. Countries like China that registered phenomenal progress witnessed such periods of accelerated change, which resulted in their take-off into the league of developed nations. During the two decades from 1978 to 1997, under Deng Xiaoping’s vision and pragmatism, China raced ahead on the path to unstoppable development. In 1980, India and China were comparable in GDP size. In per capita terms, India was ahead with $582 against China’s $307. Two decades later, in 2000, China surged ahead to a GDP of $1.22 trillion while India was only able to reach $468 billion. In per capita terms, too, China surged ahead to $969 against India’s $442. During those two decades, China singularly focused on developing its manufacturing sector and emerged as the “factory of the world”.AdvertisementIn the past couple of decades, with its advances in the services sector, India emerged as the “office of the world”. But PM Modi is determined to achieve not incremental but spectacular growth in the next two decades. Why shouldn’t there be 50 Indian companies in the Fortune 500 list? Why shouldn’t Indian banks be among the top banks in the world? Shouldn’t our consulting firms or accounting firms be among the top firms in the world?you may likeThe only answer to these questions raised by the PM is for the entire country — bureaucracy, state and local governments, industry and entrepreneurs, and leaders in all other sectors like agriculture, education, technology and innovation — to catch up with the pace of the PM. Viksit Bharat should be a “whole-of-the-nation” ambition.The writer is national vice-president, BJP and president, India Foundation