25 years of public life.
I’m 20 years old, and when I think about that number, it is difficult to comprehend. When you became Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001, I wasn’t even born. Today, I’m watching you complete 25 years of leading governments, first Gujarat and then India.
What I admire most is not simply what has already been built. It is the direction in which you have tried to take India.
From toilets, electricity, cooking gas, bank accounts, houses and tap water for ordinary Indians, to highways, metros, high-speed rail, airports, semiconductors, digital infrastructure, space technology and indigenous defence capabilities.
From Jan Dhan to UPI.
From Swachh Bharat to Jal Jeevan.
From Make in India to semiconductor manufacturing.
From Chandrayaan to a stronger space programme.
From basic infrastructure to the ambition of a developed India.
That is the India my generation is growing up in.
And what matters to me most is that Viksit Bharat 2047 is not supposed to be the destination of one government or one generation. It is supposed to be the India that my generation actually lives in.
I will be 41 in 2047. The children being born today will be adults.
They will live with the infrastructure we build, the industries we create, the technology we develop, the institutions we strengthen and the confidence we give the country.
That is why, after 25 years, I don't just want to say thank you.
I want to ask: what comes next?
I’m only 20. I have nowhere near the experience, knowledge or understanding of governance that you have. So perhaps I have no business prescribing a roadmap to someone who has spent 25 years actually running governments.
But as a young Indian, I can still share what I hope the next phase of India's transformation looks like.
Municipal and civic reforms, so our cities become cleaner, better planned and genuinely livable.
Bureaucratic reforms, so decisions move faster, accountability becomes clearer and an ordinary citizen doesn't have to fight an entire administrative maze to get basic work done.
Judicial reforms, so justice becomes faster, more accessible and less burdened by decades of pending cases.
Stronger federal and state-level governance, with clearer responsibilities, better cooperation between the Centre and states, and empowered local governments.
A much stronger push on defence acquisitions and indigenous defence technology, so our armed forces get what they need faster while India builds the industrial capacity to design and manufacture more of it at home.
And beyond these, education, urbanisation, policing, civil services, regulatory reform, manufacturing, research, energy and institutional capacity all need to become part of the next stage.
Because the first phase was about bringing basic necessities and basic infrastructure to millions.
The next phase has to be about making Indian institutions world-class.
You have spoken about rebuilding India's national self-confidence.
For my generation, I think that confidence means believing that India can build world-class cities, world-class universities, world-class companies, world-class infrastructure and world-class institutions.
Not because India has already achieved everything.
But because we believe we are capable of achieving it.
That is the India I want to grow old in.
And that is the question I would genuinely want to ask you after 25 years:
What is your vision for the next 25?
What should my generation build after the foundations laid during these years?
Because 25 years is a remarkable milestone.
But at 20, I don't see it as the end of a journey.
I see it as the point where my generation has to start asking what we are going to do with the foundation we have inherited.
25 years behind you.
21 years to 2047.
And an entire generation waiting to build what comes next. 🇮🇳
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