Winston Churchill had once described the late Victorian decades as an age of great men and small events. Pandit Nehru spoke of the reverse when he described the time period 1959-1960 as a time when small men were facing great events and great decisions.
A quarter of the 21st century has passed us by, and these two score and more years can be described as an era marked by enormous events. Leapfrogging advances in science and technology that would baffle the most fertile imagination have come alongside degradation and depravity hitherto fore unheralded.
The post war world saw unprecedented growth in the quality of human life, wealth, and political morality generally. The world order drifted into unipolarity and just as that appeared to be the new reality, events of the past decade again changed the world order, and these changes continue like incessant seismic events shaking what were earlier considered firm foundations.
The pandemic, war in Ukraine and now the US-Iran war, which have abandoned the international order based on the rule of law and the new paradigm of punitive tariffs have fractured supply chain and created a power crises in West Asia, while Europe struggles to come to terms with the new politico economics in which they have been left to fend for themselves.
Defying doomsdayers, India has stood out as an island of stability and an engine of growth during this tumultuous period, and an analysis would show that it was possible because it has had political continuity with a firm sense of direction.
The first defining feature of PM Modi’s decade plus leadership has been stability and political continuity combined with a clear sense of national direction – a feature conspicuous by its absence in western democracies.
Consider the political ledger of the last twelve years. Britain has run through 6 prime ministers. France has had 9, with President Macron searching for his 6th premier in under two years. Japan and Italy have had 5 prime ministers. The United States has passed through four presidential terms and two handovers between parties that scarcely agree on the basic facts of governance.
The cornerstone of PM Modi’s leadership is stability and policy driven by an unshakeable conviction that India must build on its foundations, and a strong and stable India at home creates a more confident and autonomous India abroad.
India is a country with a powerful reservoir of tradition and learning which for the decades that followed independence was buried under the debris of colonialism. Ancient Indian wisdom adapted to contemporary times is increasingly evident as the new mantra where ethics morality and empathy for the underprivileged have become the underpinning of contemporary institution. Harnessing the advances in technology to usher in prosperity that permeates to the poorest and creating opportunity for every curious and adventurous young mind have become the focus of the model for nation building. A strong sense of Indianness at the heart of the new Indian identity with a sense of pride without any elements of arrogance, and a belief that dreams of today will be the realities of tomorrow in a nation that is strong, stable and confident lies at the heart of the Modi Doctrine.
In a decade when the democratic world's defining political feature has been a churn to find a new identity, PM Modi has given India something its partners and rivals alike envy: stability and continuity. Governments elsewhere have fallen faster than the crises they were elected to manage. India has ridden those crises like a strong warrior undeterred by the terrain he sets out to conquer.
The foundation of this stability rests on an uncomplicated proposition articulated consistently by the Prime Minister since 2014: India's choices will be determined by national interest, not external pressure. Ultimately, India's interests are decided by Indians who know India and understand it with all its diversities and complexities.
One manifestation of this is a foreign policy that is grounded in freedom of action rather than membership of blocs. Under PM Modi, India has deepened its partnership with the United States without abandoning its historic relationship with Russia. It participates in the Quad while remaining consequential within BRICS. It has built close strategic ties with Israel while simultaneously strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the wider Arab world, and keeping open channels with Tehran.
India’s ability to ride these apparent contradictions stems from a recognition by its friends and foes alike that Indian foreign policy will not be deflected by passing winds of fortune or adversity as its roots run deep.
This is the underappreciated dividend of political stability. Global actors know whom to engage in New Delhi. India's red lines are well defined and are not hostage to political convenience and have not moved with election cycles. They know that when PM Modi commits, the commitment outlasts the news cycle.
PM Modi has consistently converted India's stability into a platform for the Global South, supplying vaccines to more than a hundred countries under Vaccine Maitri when wealthier states were hoarding doses, convening the Voice of Global South Summit to carry those countries' concerns into forums that had ignored them, and securing the African Union's permanent seat at the G20 during India's presidency.
Weathering the Pandemic Shock
A remarkable an example of the gains of this focus is the way in which India navigated the economy during the pandemic. While most of the developed world responded to by blindly pumping cash into economies, PM Modi focused on protecting the poor through welfare and social security while continuing to push long-term structural reform.
Even as the ₹20 lakh crore Atmanirbhar Bharat package provided support during the shock, the government used the disruption to accelerate changes aimed at strengthening India's productive capacity. The PLI programme was launched during the pandemic, turning a moment of global supply-chain vulnerability into an opportunity to expand domestic manufacturing.
The entrepreneurial economy also continued to move. For businesses, particularly MSMEs, the Modi government introduced the ₹3 lakh crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme, providing liquidity when economic activity had been abruptly disrupted.
undertook a vaccination drive of extraordinary scale. Critics India's ability to administer this protection and even the domestic opposition parties spread doom and gloom over the vaccines and their rollout.
PM Modi publicly became the first to take an Indian-made vaccine, a powerful endorsement of the competence of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and a strong message to infuse confidence to the country. Riding on this, India crossed the mark of 200 crore doses in just 18 months.
What began as crisis management became a platform for recovery and reform. India’s recovery emerged among the strongest in the G20. Stability in such trying times was more than withstanding a once-in-a-century shock; it meant preserving the capacity to recover, reform and move forward.
A Vote of Global Confidence in Indian Resilience
Stability ultimately imparts credibility which is demonstrated by others are willingness to bet on it. For global investors, PM Modi himself is unquestionably the face of that stability. For more than a decade, he has anchored that stability, offering political continuity and a consistent message to investors that India is open for long-term growth. Foreign-exchange reserves crossing a record $780 billion in September 2026 was more than a financial milestone – it was a loud and unequivocal cheer by the global community for the growing strength and resilience of the economy PM Modi had spent years building.
The confidence is increasingly visible in independent assessments as well. S&P upgraded India's sovereign rating from BBB- to BBB in August 2025 for the first time in 18 years. In September 2026, Japan Credit Rating Agency upgraded India’s sovereign rating to the ‘A’ category, after 30 years.
PM Modi has made economic diplomacy a central part of his engagement with world leaders, using India's political relationships to open doors for deeper commercial partnerships. 9 FTAs spanning 38 countries reflect a growing willingness to integrate more closely with the Indian economy. Taken together, these are more than economic statistics. Companies, markets, rating agencies and governments are increasingly placing long-term confidence in India's direction.
The Economics of Stability
PM Modi's long years of political and policy stability have given India the rare ability to undertake and stay the course on ambitious projects that take years, even decades, to bear fruit. These are precisely the kinds of long-gestation bets that governments constrained by changing leadership or short-term political pressures often struggle to sustain. That stability has allowed PM Modi to push India decisively into the industries of the future.
PM Modi's stability in governance is what makes decade-long missions executable. Semicon India has 12 approved projects with 3 in production. The ₹19,000 crore Green Hydrogen Mission targets 5 million tons a year by 2030, and India already runs the world's most powerful hydrogen train. The Nuclear Energy Mission aims for 100 GW by 2047, with ₹20,000 crore for small modular reactors and the SHANTI Act opening the sector to private players.
News generally follows the adage, "bad news is good news” at least for the economics of those who distribute news. These are trying and India, like the rest of the world, has to face headwinds caused by unstable political alliances, war, the breakdown of the international order, and erratic economic measures. At a moment like this, measuring our strengths and our advantages can be a matter of great comfort and measured optimism. India's greatest strengths today are its political stability and its trajectory of growth and development ushered in by the Modi doctrine. There are miles to go before we sleep, but we have the Modi Doctrine which defines the path on which we have to travel to bring the constitutional goal of justice, social, economic, and political, to the 1.4 billion fellow Indians.
(The Author is Senior Advocate of Supreme Court of India and Former Solicitor General of India)