Governance failure is rarely a failure of intention. A subsidy can be generous and still leak. A regulation can be well-intended and yet make an honest entrepreneur scared to make a procedural mistake. A grievance portal can exist and still leave a citizen feeling unheard. The more important question, therefore, is not simply whether a policy was well-intentioned, but what behaviour the system actually produced and whether it made the desired behaviour easier, more predictable and capable of being scaled.
For a country of India’s scale, governance is not merely about administering programmes. It is about building systems that can deliver to hundreds of millions of people with speed, efficiency and predictability. This is at the heart of Narendra Modi’s 25-year governance journey from Gujarat to the Union government. The defining shift has been from managing individual schemes to redesigning the systems through which the state interacts with citizens, businesses and officials.
The principle is simple: make the right outcome easier to achieve, easier to measure and easier to scale.
Technology has been central to this transformation. Digital identity, direct transfers, standardized processes, dashboards, rankings, digital procurement, grievance platforms and public performance data have created a new governance paradigm that allows the government to operate at unprecedented scale and speed.
The economic impact is significant.
The JAM architecture - Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile connectivity - created a direct digital pathway between the Government and the Citizen. More than ₹53 lakh crore has reached beneficiary accounts through DBT mechanisms, while estimated savings to the exchequer stand at ₹5.14 lakh crore, by weeding out duplicate, deceased & fake beneficiaries..
A 2025 assessment found that even as beneficiary coverage expanded 16-fold, the Welfare Efficiency Index i.e the proportion of money spent by Government that actually reaches the citizen skyrocketed from 0.32 in 2014 to 0.91 in 2023
In PM-KISAN, while 4.47 lakh crore has been transferred directly into 9.49 crore farmer’s bank accounts, removal of 2.1 crore ineligible beneficiaries was associated with estimated savings of ₹22,106 crore. In the food distribution system, more than 5.03 crore duplicate, fake or nonexistent ration cards were deleted, while 80 crore people were given free food grains every month, a globally unique Universal Basic Income support, indexed to inflation.
The objective is not merely to plug leakages. It is to make welfare delivery better targeted, efficient and scalable.
Driven by PM Modi’s Jan Bhagidari principle, the citizens have also increasingly become partners in governance. The Give It Up campaign encouraged households to voluntarily surrender their LPG subsidy. More than 1.13 crore consumers responded, while 4.15 crore duplicate, fake, nonexistent or inactive LPG connections were eliminated.
This demonstrates that policy can work not only through regulation, but also through trust, transparency and civic participation.
The same philosophy extends to economic regulation.
For an entrepreneur, regulation costs more than money. It consumes time, attention, uncertainty and, at times, confidence. Excessive criminalisation can therefore encourage defensive behaviour instead of productive compliance.
The Jan Vishwas reforms address this problem directly. The Jan Vishwas Act of 2023 decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts. The 2026 legislation went substantially further. It amended 784 provisions across 79 Central Acts administered by 23 Ministries, decriminalising 717 provisions & over 1000 offences and amending 67 provisions to promote ease of living. The Act came into effect in April 2026.
The same thinking runs through the Regulatory Compliance Burden initiative. By November 2025, more than 47,000 compliances had been reduced, including 16,108 simplified, 22,287 digitised, 4,458 decriminalised and 4,270 redundant compliances removed.
Individually, each reduction may appear small. Across millions of firms and citizens, those small reductions become an economic gain.
The same principle is visible in public procurement. GeM changes the default from fragmented, relationship-driven procurement to a more transparent digital marketplace where buyers can compare suppliers and sellers can see government demand.
By 30 July 2026, GeM had 11.75 lakh MSMEs, 37,758 startups and 2.17 lakh women entrepreneurs registered. MSME procurement through the platform reached Rs 2.37 lakh crore in FY 2025–26.
These numbers matter because access to government demand can itself become an industrial policy instrument. A small firm that can see and compete for public demand has a stronger reason to invest in capability, quality and scale.
Performance is also becoming increasingly measurable.
In 2026, the prescribed CPGRAMS grievance disposal timeline was reduced from 30 days to 21 days. Between January 1 and July 15, 2026, the platform received 15.21 lakh grievances, with an average disposal time of 13 days for Central Ministries and Departments.
The larger principle is straightforward: what can be measured can be managed, and what can be seen can be improved. This is the deeper governance transformation underway.
A farmer receiving support directly can plan with greater certainty. An entrepreneur facing fewer unnecessary compliances can focus on building a business. An MSME with access to public demand can invest in capacity. A citizen who can track a grievance has greater confidence in the system.
In each case, governance changes the behaviour of the recipient. And when that change happens across millions of citizens, enterprises and officials, it creates an economic dividend.
The deeper change brought forth by PM Modi’s governance model is the creation of a more deliberately designed interface between the state, the citizen, the entrepreneur and the official and one that relies on Trusting the Citizen or “Jan Vishwas” as PM Modi has defined the new paradigm of Governance for Viksit Bharat
India’s scale was once primarily seen as an administrative challenge. The emerging governance architecture offers a different possibility: scale can become an advantage when common digital and institutional systems allow services, markets and opportunities to reach people efficiently.
The next phase of India’s growth will depend on capital, infrastructure, skills, technology and entrepreneurship. But governance determines how effectively these forces come together.
That is why the Modi model of governance is no longer merely an administrative function. It is becoming an economic asset and potentially one of India’s strongest competitive advantages as the country scales towards a developed economy.
(The author is Member, Niti Aayog and former Cabinet Secretary, Government of India.)