By T N Ashok
As Narendra Modi overtakes Jawaharlal Nehru as India’s longest-serving Prime Minister to this day, the inevitable comparisons have begun. The period of tenure of Nehru is taken from his swearing in as the PM in 1952 after the holding of the first general elections in independent India. This comparison does not take into account the period from August 15, 1947 to the post general election 1952. Yet comparing the two men is akin to comparing a nation’s architect with its renovator. One built a state from the ruins of an empire. The other seeks to reshape a mature republic in an era of global competition.
By any measure, June 2026 marks a symbolic turning point in Indian political history. Narendra Modi has surpassed Jawaharlal Nehru’s uninterrupted tenure as Prime Minister, a record many once believed unassailable. And whether you like Modi or not for his alleged crony capitalism of favouring two industrial houses against others, he has carved a niche for himself as the first non congress opposition non dynastic leader to serve the longest term.
For supporters of Modi, it is the culmination of a political revolution that began in Gujarat and swept through New Delhi in 2014. For admirers of Nehru, it is merely an arithmetic milestone that cannot erase the foundational role played by India’s first Prime Minister. The truth lies somewhere between reverence and revisionism. Both men inherited difficult Indias. But the Indias they inherited were separated by seven decades of transformation.
When Jawaharlal Nehru assumed office in August 1947, India was not merely poor; it was traumatised. He was the builder of the Indian republic based on his philosophy of socialism, state control, state run public sector companies and banks, from the ruins of the East India company that had plundered the nation and spirited away all its treasures including the prized Kohinoor diamond that adorns the British Royalty’s Crown — seems non negotiable for the Britain to return it to its rightful owner.
Partition had killed perhaps a million people. Refugees flooded across newly drawn borders. Literacy hovered around 12 per cent. Life expectancy barely touched 32 years. Industrial production was negligible. Food shortages were chronic.
The question confronting Nehru was simple: how does one transform a colony into a nation? His answer was shaped by Fabian socialism, the intellectual currents of Britain’s Labour movement, and the influence of institutions such as the London School of Economics. Though never a doctrinaire Marxist, Nehru believed markets alone could not lift hundreds of millions from poverty.
Nehru’s achievements were substantial. He established parliamentary democracy in a region where many newly independent states descended into military rule. He built independent institutions, nurtured a free press, respected judicial autonomy and strengthened electoral legitimacy.
The steel plants of Bhilai, Durgapur and Rourkela became symbols of industrial modernity. Large dams were hailed as the “temples of modern India.” Yet the Nehru model carried heavy costs.
The licence-permit-quota system created a bureaucratic labyrinth. Private enterprise was constrained. Economic growth averaged around 3–4 per cent annually, later derided as the “Hindu rate of growth.” Nehru’s greatest strategic failure remains the 1962 war with China. His belief in Asian solidarity collapsed against Chinese military reality.
Nevertheless, internationally, Nehru’s stature was immense. He stood alongside figures such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Josip Broz Tito and Kwame Nkrumah as one of the principal voices of the post-colonial world. For newly independent nations, Nehru was not merely India’s leader. He was among the architects of a new international order.
Nehru’s daughter inherited both his institutions and his ideological framework. She became the matriarch of High Noon of State Control. Yet where Nehru was a democrat first and socialist second, Indira Gandhi often reversed the priorities. The nationalisation of banks in 1969, the abolition of privy purses and the populist slogan “Garibi Hatao” expanded state intervention dramatically.
The public sector became dominant. India won the 1971 war and helped create Bangladesh, arguably the country’s greatest military victory. Yet the Emergency of 1975–77 revealed the dangers of concentrated power. The mixed economy became increasingly rigid. By the late 1980s, India was running out of options.
The true turning point came not under Modi but under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. They brought the real breakthrough – the course correction from left to middle to right to align with the world which was right everywhere , right or wrong, collateral damage it encouraged corny capitalism later on.
In 1991, India faced a balance-of-payments crisis severe enough to threaten national bankruptcy. Gold reserves were pledged abroad. The old model had reached its limits. Rao and Singh dismantled industrial licensing, reduced tariffs, opened sectors to foreign investment and integrated India into the global economy.
The significance of 1991 cannot be overstated. Modern India’s growth story begins there. Every government since — Congress, coalition, BJP — has largely accepted the fundamentals of liberalisation. There would be adjustments, but there would be no return to Nehruvian socialism.
Paradoxically, India stands at the same corner it stood once in 1991, where Rao and Singh faced unprecedented challenges this time around if reports are correct India under Modi is selling its Gold Reserves, not pledged as collateral as Rao-Singh did, but to redeem its lost foreign exchange through FDI and FII;s institutional flows that have fled to other countries in the aftermath of the Gaza, Ukraine and Iran wars amid supply chain disruptions , high costs of imports of crude and high technologies, citation needed, but foreign capital of over near $100 billion depleted from the once near $700 billion of foreign exchange reserves.
When Narendra Modi entered office in 2014, he inherited an India transformed by two decades of economic reform. His rise to power was on the War Cry of ending corruption of the UPA regime between 2009-2014 when Coalgate, 2G spectrum and Commonwealth scandals obliterated the Congress rule of 10 years from 2004.
The challenge was no longer nation-building but acceleration. Modi presented himself as the great reformer of not just economic policies , but polarised communities favouring the majority community at the cost of the constitutional provisions which once protected the minorities from the muslims to sikhs to parsis to jains to buddhists to follow their own faiths and their own religious codes of behaviour.
Modi fused economic modernisation with muscular nationalism. His supporters point to: Massive infrastructure expansion; Digital governance; Financial inclusion; Manufacturing initiatives; Welfare delivery through technology; Record highway, railway and airport construction.
The state under Modi has become simultaneously more market-friendly and more centralised. Critics describe the model as crony capitalism. They argue that economic power has become concentrated among a small number of large corporate groups. They point to rising inequality and concerns over institutional independence.
Supporters counter that large-scale infrastructure and industrial transformation require national champions capable of competing globally. Both arguments contain elements of truth. India today is neither socialist nor fully free-market. It is a hybrid system where the state remains deeply interventionist while simultaneously encouraging private capital.
If Nehru’s world was defined by the Cold War, Modi’s is defined by strategic fragmentation. From the realms of long innings of chief ministership, Modi successfully transformed onto the national stage as a Prime Minister with charisma and later his trajectory into the international world of destabilising geopolitics was marked by his anchoring Souths voice in BRICS, G20, and other global forums and bilateral leadership summits with European leaders, strengthening ties with US now being threatened by Russian oil buys in the name of India’s sovereignty, and a declining popularity with inflation, industrial stagnation, slower growth rates in the aftermath of wars in middle east , and unemployment and coalition politics.
Nehru sought non-alignment between Washington and Moscow. Modi balances Washington, Moscow and Beijing simultaneously. Embracing a philosophy of India’s Sovereignty not entirely his own but the script being written in the corridors of the Foreign Office. With tutelage coming from a foreign secretary turned foreign minister Dr S Jaishankar, a career bureaucrat and not a politician like Sardar Swaran Singh.
His geopolitical environment is arguably more dangerous. India depends on Russian weapons and energy. It seeks American technology and investment. It competes with China across the Himalayas and throughout Asia. The challenge resembles a geopolitical spider’s web.
During the Ukraine conflict, India resisted Western pressure to abandon Russian oil purchases. During tensions with China, India deepened relations with the United States while avoiding formal alliances. In West Asia, India has maintained ties with Israel, Iran and Gulf monarchies simultaneously.
Few leaders have attempted such a balancing act. Unlike Nehru, whose influence often rested on moral authority, Modi’s diplomacy rests on strategic utility. Nehru spoke for the developing world. Modi negotiates among competing great powers. Nehru’s growth story was institutional. He built universities, laboratories, public enterprises, courts, elections and constitutional norms. His obsession was creating permanence.
Modi’s growth story is infrastructural and technological. His focus lies on execution, delivery and scale. Where Nehru built institutions, Modi built networks. Where Nehru sought legitimacy through ideas, Modi seeks legitimacy through outcomes. Where Nehru spoke the language of international idealism, Modi speaks the language of national interest. So is the comparison between different India’s fair and logical.
Perhaps not. Nehru inherited a fractured colony emerging from imperial rule. From the ruins and ashes of an imperial colonist Britain that sneaked through the backdoor in the name of East India company, plundered the nation of its resources and capital, used its human resource to fight the world war 11 which was not India’s, left it in poverty and from the crying wounds of partition that lay millions dead along the borders.
Nehru’s India was one of resurrection and not one of building a modern India on the foundation laid by the illustrious prime minister, a benefit of which Modi largely enjoyed.
Nehru inherited a looted nation bereft of capital and resources or infrastructure and built an India from scratch. Modi inherited the world’s fifth-largest economy. The foundation was laid by Congress leaders like Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh. That Vajpayee sensibly followed after the disastrous regimes of VP Singh ,Chandrasekhar , Gowda and Gujral that followed Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat at the hustings.
Nehru was building foundations. Modi is adding floors to a structure already standing. Moreover, many of the opportunities available to Modi were created by decisions made decades earlier. The IIT graduates powering India’s technology revolution emerged from institutions founded during the Nehru era.
The economic dynamism that Modi celebrates was unleashed by the Rao-Singh reforms. The digital revolution rests upon educational, administrative and economic structures built over generations. Likewise, Nehru’s achievements cannot excuse the economic stagnation that followed.
Nor can Modi’s economic successes exempt him from questions about institutional concentration and democratic balance. History rarely offers simple verdicts. Nehru created the republic. Rao and Singh liberated its economy. Modi has sought to transform its scale and ambition.
The longest-serving Prime Minister title may now belong to Narendra Modi. But the larger contest between the two men is not about duration. It is about legacy. And that debate will continue long after both have passed into history.
Critics doubt whether India after a decade from now will speak with the same eloquence it spoke about Nehru and Rao-Singh with the same tone about Modi, or he would be remembered by people as one that promoted crony capitalism encouraging only fellow community brethren industrial homes from Kutch and Gujarat and not the whole of India. (IPA Service)
