In the same census data there are 2 Indians living side by side. One is a country that has constructed more highways in ten years than it did in the prior six, has lit up nearly every village with electricity, has brought hundreds of millions into the formal banking system and has become the fastest-growing major economy in the world. One is a country where close to half of its youth have no jobs, the richest one per cent now possesses more of the country's wealth than ever before since Independence, and the data of official statistics is so opaque that independent economists regularly debate whether the national poverty figures are aspirational or real.

There is a real India on both sides. Which the Modi government, coming up on 12 years of power this week, should be held accountable for, along with them.

As presented, the scoreboard should show a score of 10.

By any standards, the Government's own twelve year milestone communication is enormous in scope. More than 81 crore people have been availed free food grain each month. More than four crore houses have been built under PM Awas Yojana. Today, about 10.5 lakh rural households are connected to tap water, which was once a distant dream in rural areas when this government assumed office in May 2014. More than 32 crore women have opened Jan Dhan bank accounts and more than 91 lakh SHGs have been formally strengthened, thus laying the groundwork of a de facto grassroots financial network, which was merely a paper reality under the previous governments.

The change on infrastructure is less easily opposed. At the time of coming to power of the NDA government, there were 74 operational airports in India. This currently is 164. In 2014, Metro Rail operated on about 248km, now it runs on more than 1,013 km in 23 cities and India is the third largest Metro Rail system in the world today. Today, the average number of highway construction has tripled from less than 12 km built per day in 2014 to more than 34 km built per day. The number of national highways has increased by about 60%. Rail electrification, which was a work that seemed to take 10 years, is now complete on 99.1 per cent of the network. But the Vande Bharat trains -- now 164 in number, providing 333 district connectivity are something the Indian Railways of 2014 simply couldn't have delivered.

There's also the digital revolution, which could well be this Government's greatest legacy. In 2025 alone, UPI in India facilitated 228 billion transactions. In February 2026, the system could process 16.6 billion transactions per month. UPI QR codes have grown to 731 million merchant points. But the size of this digitisation from UP's street vendors to Gujarat's wholesale traders has quietly broken one of India's oldest structural challenges informal economy is not a part of any formal financial system.

The economy: World-beating headline, complicated interior

The GDP figures are truly remarkable. In 2015, India's economy stood at $2.1 trillion, while in 2025, it has more than doubled to $4.3 trillion, which is a remarkable growth given that no other major economy in the world has achieved this rate of expansion over the last ten years. The current year's real GDP growth is expected to be 7.6 per cent in FY2025-26, which is up from 6.5 per cent in the year before. Despite the catastrophic decline in COVID-19 in FY21 of 5.8 percent, the average annual growth over 12 years remains among the strongest performances of any large economy in the world.

India has consistently been named as the fastest growing major economy in the world by the IMF, World Bank and independent analysts, outperforming not only the economies of the United States and Europe but also China, which has been clocking 4-5 percent growth in recent years. At purchasing power parity, per capita GDP has increased from approximately $5000 in 2014 to more than $7000 in 2022 and it is still on the rise.

But there's also some internal inconsistencies in these headline figures that are hard for any honest watcher of the games to miss. Conversely, the proportion of workers in agriculture which was expected to decrease as workers move into industry has actually increased, from 42.5 percent in 2018-19 to 46.1 percent in 2023-24. The proportion of people employed in manufacturing has decreased. More than half of all men and two-thirds of all women are now self-employed, and in mostly low productivity, low income arrangements. What was envisaged as the "demographic dividend" that would drive sustained industrial growth in India, with the power of India's young population, has not happened as expected.

The statistics of inequality are disturbing. As per multiple independent assessments, the wealth concentration is at a near-historic high in India and the distribution of income has deteriorated during most of Modi years. According to the UN Development Programme's Multidimensional Poverty Index 2025, approximately 16.4 percent (or 235 million) of the Indian population was also found to be in overlapping deprivations of health, education, and basic living standards, while 18 percent was considered vulnerable.

Redistribution without transformation the welfare argument

The political claim of the welfare programmes is not unimportant, nor is it intellectually dishonest to reject it. Providing free rations to 80 crore is no small change, it is a logistical and political feat of the highest order. In a way, it is the real and measurable improvement in daily life, from health insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh to 50 crore people to the construction of nearly 10 crore toilets and the provision of LPG connections to more than 10 crore households, which are making the life of hundreds of millions of people who had been structurally excluded from development for generations.

The 90 percent coverage in immunisation, more than 19,000 affordable medicines available at Jan Aushadhi centres, and more than Rs 4.3 lakh crore transferred directly to the account of farmers are not press releases. They are independently audited and broadly substantiated transfers and programme output.

The more serious criticism is not so much that these programmes are missing, but that they are "redistribution without structural change. If you give someone a house, free food and a gas cylinder, this is real improvement in life. It does not, on its own, provide them with a living wage to ultimately not require the free food. The welfare state that is being built in India is one that is being used to manage poverty not end it, and this is very significant when you factor in the next 20 years. India has to integrate about 10 million new workers annually into the mainstream economy. That's not what the current economic system is doing.

The world-wide situation that nobody speaks about

The global context has to be a part of any fair assessment of the 12 years of Indian governance. The period 2014-26 was no steady years for any big economy. These ranged from a global commodity crash to the self-invoked shock of demonetisation in 2016, the transition shock of the GST in 2017-18, the worst Covid-19 pandemic in a century, elevated inflation due to energy shocks, and now a renewed shock from the ongoing US tariff escalation. It is remarkable how well India came through these years compared to many other similar economies, and that is certainly a success story of macroeconomic policy.

During this time, India also gained a significant following and boosted its international presence. The handling of the G20 Presidency in 2023 was done competently. Defence exports, which stood at roughly Rs 686 crore in 2013-14, grew to over Rs 21,000 crore by 2023-24. The startup ecosystem grew from almost non-existent to more than 2.2 lakh registered startups. Space programme successes such as the 2023 Chandrayaan-3 landing on the lunar south pole drew international attention and marked a true drive in technology.

Prior to the data, there is a grey area that cannot be resolved.

The truth that no partisan side is comfortable in saying is this: after 12 years of Modi government, the country is physically better connected, more financially included and economically larger than the country in 2014. They have also created a nation in which an astonishing proportion of its working-age population is underemployed, with a significant increase in inequality, and the quality of formal jobs has not matched the increase in GDP.

There is no doubt about the welfare programmes being a commitment to the poor the figures are real, the people are real. But the structural economy which in the long run should make such programmes redundant is not in place. The industrialization process has not taken off at the level required by India. The skills base for the services sector continues to be confined to a small number of high-skilled employees.

The India in June 2026 is a crossroads, more promising than any celebration and more precarious than any critique that can be offered. The base infrastructure, digital rails, financial inclusion, basic welfare delivery is arguably the strongest it has ever been. The question is what will be built on that in the next 12 years. That is an answer that isn't yet written.