India Has Arrived
It's a big, bold subject that we're taking up today. And I want to start with a very basic, simple question. What is New India?
It is not a slogan or a PR line. It is a reality that is taking shape before our very eyes. New India is digital, confident, global.
New India is one point four billion people. It's the largest democracy on Earth, the fastest growing major economy, the youngest population in the world, perhaps also the most impatient. We are a startup nation, we are a space power, and we are a voice of the global south.
A country that negotiates with Washington, trades with Moscow, competes with China builds with Tokyo, and still finds time to send mangoes to West Asia. New India does not ask for a seat at the table.
We build a table and tell the world to join. And whatever I've said so far is not rhetoric. It is our reality, which is reflected in our numbers.
And I'm a big fan of storytelling with numbers. Last quarter, our GDP grew at seven point eight percent. And this happened at a time when the US is staring at a slowdown.
You must have seen the latest Fitch report. It also happened at a time when Europe is flirting with recession, when China is struggling with the weight of its debt burden. India is running. Last month, UPI crossed twenty billion transactions, total value more than twenty-four lakh crore rupees.
It's a world record, and we are far from done. India is the world's fourth-largest economy, on course to becoming the third largest by twenty twenty-seven, behind just US and China, ahead of Germany and Japan. And our story, ladies and gentlemen, is not just about size.
It is about scale, scope, and speed. Our digital economy is exploding. Our space mission is landing near the south pole of the moon.
Our startups are valued in billions. We have more than one hundred unicorns now in our country. Our diaspora remittances crossed a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars last year, the highest in the world.
This is New India. A country once written off as a basket case is today called a bright spot in the global economy. So what makes New India tick?
I can think of five Ds. My first D is demography. Half our population is under thirty years of age.
Yes, they spend too much time on Instagram. And they also want a promotion in the first month in office. But they're ambitious, they're unafraid, they're entrepreneurial.
They are hungry to make a mark, and that is our strength that we must celebrate. My second D is democracy. In a world that is drifting towards authoritarianism, India stands out.
We are very chaotic. We argue, we disagree, we protest, we vote, but we move on. We've always had a peaceful transition of power.
And sometimes it feels like democracy is slowing us down. But we must remember that democracy is also what saves us. It is what makes us who we are, a noisy, chaotic family of one point four billion people.
The third D on my list is diversity. Twenty-two official languages, hundreds of dialects, and every religion under the sun. India is not a melting pot.
We are a very big thali where every dish retains its unique taste, and together it makes a meal. The fourth D is digital power.
From Aadhaar to UPI, India is building a digital public infrastructure at scale.We have shown that technology can deliver inclusion and in such large numbers. My fifth D is diaspora. 35 million Indians abroad.
Policy makers, CEOs of global giants, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs. They are India's brand ambassadors. No PR agency can match them.
Now, if you put these five Ds together, demography, democracy, diversity, digital power, diaspora, what you get is a country that is not just a regional player, it is a global power. Not just a market, but a shaper of rules. Not just a voice, but an agenda setter.
But we cannot operate in isolation, so we have to step out of our borders, look at our neighborhood, and look at our world. Our world is changing fast, unpredictably, and often chaotically. American unipolarity is over.
Chinese ascendancy is facing headwinds. Europe is struggling for relevance. Russia is gambling with aggression.
West Asia remains a powder keg. Africa is demanding long overdue attention. Latin America is looking for partners.
The institutions created after the Second World War are showing their age. Today, the United Nations Security Council does not reflect the realities of 2025. It reflects the realities of 1945.
The World Trade Organization is struggling to function. The IMF and the World Bank face questions of legitimacy. Technology is redrawing power maps faster than diplomats can update their talking points.
Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, these are not buzzwords. These are the new currencies of global influence. Climate change, it does not respect national borders.
It does not respect protocol. It creates new vulnerabilities, new conflicts, new migration patterns. And everywhere, nationalism is resurgent, not always in the best way.
The promise of borderless globalization has given way to strategic patriotism. This is not a stable world order. This is a world in transition, where rules are being rewritten, power is being redistributed, and alliances are being reconsidered.
And for decades, India was a recipient of these changes. We adapted to what the world decided and did. But today, we have the opportunity.
And why just opportunity? I would say today we have the responsibility to shape our world ourselves. So the question is, how do we do that?
We do it with a domestic policy that does justice to our talent and our aspirations. And a foreign policy that is bold, agile, and unapologetic. Look at the G20 in Delhi.
India was the chair last year. We put the Global South at the center of the conversation. Look at BRICS. Look at the Quad.
Look at the SCO. India is part of all these clubs. Sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating, always balancing, and always consequential.
And this is new India's foreign policy. It is not non-alignment. It is multi-alignment. We engage with everyone, but we depend on no one.
And our biggest commitment is to our national interest. And it's not easy to walk this path, especially in a neighborhood as difficult as ours. I would say South Asia is one of the most volatile regions in the world today.
Look at the past three years. Coup in Myanmar, economic collapse in Sri Lanka, radical takeover in Bangladesh, and I'm sure you followed what happened in Nepal this week. Nepal is our closest neighbor and closest, oldest civilizational partner.
This week it was in turmoil. The government tried to ban social media. Gen Z hit the streets.Dozens of people died, protesters clashed with the police, the prime minister had to resign.
Now they have an interim government in place. Social media has been restored. But Nepal's fault lines have not been addressed.
They've not been repaired. And for India, this, these stories are not abstracts. They have real consequences for us.
Security, trade, refugees. To our west, we have a terrorist state called Pakistan. First time I'm hearing people cheering for Pakistan. We have Afghanistan that is ruled by the Taliban, and we have China, which remains our biggest challenge.
I think the handshakes in Tianjin will not change China's DNA. We must remember that. Our friendship may be framed on paper, India and China, but the reality is steel and barbed wire along the LAC, and we must remember that.
China wants Asia for itself. India says there's room for all of us to grow, and that contest will define this century. And what makes life even more complicated is the uncertainty around us.
I recently learned a new term called VUCA. Have you heard of VUCA? V-U-C-A. V for vulnerability, U for uncertainty, C for complexity, and A for ambiguity.
They say we live in a VUCA world. That's VUCA for you. In America, they have a different name for it.
It's Donald Trump. His tariffs have single-handedly destabilized the world. He believes, I think he truly believes that it's a magic wand, but it's proven to be a wrecking ball and no one's telling him that. He wants to sell us corn and dairy, and he wants us to stop buying Russian oil.
So what has India done? We continue talking. We pursue a deal, but we insist on a deal that works for both of us. Again, that's new India for you.
We stand our ground. But the larger point I'm making is this, that our world is messy and our neighborhood is chaotic, and it is in this setting that India must maintain its momentum. Plus, we have our own challenges that we cannot afford to ignore.
I will not sugarcoat reality for you. I'm sure you did not call me here to offer comfortable platitudes. It's important that we do an honest assessment.
If we are to grow, we must understand our strengths and our limitations with unflinching clarity. Because opportunity does not automatically translate into achievement, and potential does not guarantee performance. We have to work towards it as one country.
So I have a list of challenges, too. I think our biggest challenge today is jobs. We have millions of people entering their most productive years, millions of people entering the workforce or the job market every year.
We talked about demographics, and we like to think of that as a dividend, but it can also be a disaster. It depends entirely on what we do with our human potential. Our growth is strong.
That is undeniable. But manufacturing jobs are not, and services cannot absorb everyone. There's been an aggressive push to make in India. It has delivered on a lot of counts.
But as things stand, even today, we still risk skipping the industrial phase that creates mass employment. And this is linked to our second challenge, which is human capital. You mentioned Sundar Pichai.
I did not understand Tamil, but I got that. So at the top, we have created Sundar Pichais and Satya Nadellas. But at the bottom, we've also left millions behind.
The education gaps, the health gaps, the skill gaps, they're all real, and they must be addressed urgently. Our third challenge is institutions. Do you know how many pending court cases we have in our country?
50 million. 50 million. Our justice system is clogged. In a digital world, our bureaucracy is still moving at analog speed.
And I don't want to take away from the efforts that have been made to boost efficiency. We have made leaps, and yet we have regulations that create roadblocks rather than roads.The fourth challenge is social cohesion. Our diversity is a strength only if it is maintained and managed well.
But it's a vulnerability if it is exploited by vested interests. Polarization, inequality, gender gaps, these are not social issues. These are strategic limitations on our national power.
The fifth is environment. It is a challenge. It's a story that repeats every year.
Delhi chokes. We are bracing for that season to come. Chennai floods. Farmers face droughts. Again, these are present constraints on our development.
And the sixth, and my favorite topic, unfortunately, is global perception. Old stereotypes still haunt us. We may have reached the moon, but the world is still talking about snake charmers, call centers, poverty porn.
The world often sees us through someone else's lens, and that narrative must change, and no one else is going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves. We have to take charge of our story.
And all the challenges that I just listed are not reasons for despair. I think they should be reasons for determination. We have to be clear-eyed if we want our vision to turn into reality.
Thankfully for us, India also stands at a vantage point. The great supply chain reorganization is underway. I keep talking about it on my show.
The pandemic and the politics that followed has taught the world the risks of overdependence on China, so companies are looking for other markets, they're relocating, and India offers a compelling alternative. I think the best example is Apple. Apple is making iPhones in India, and this is not just an investment story.
When one of the world's most valuable companies invests in India, builds in India, commits to India, then it's a message to the whole world. Then we have energy transition. The world is talking about clean fuel, and here India is poised to take the leadership role.
Our renewable capacity is growing impressively. Tamil Nadu, again, is a great example. Our potential for solar power is enormous, and our ambitions for green hydrogen are substantial.
We must take the lead here. I've already spoken about the digital transformation, Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker. We built the pipes.
Our technology talent is globally recognized, but what we need to focus on is tech sovereignty. We need to build our systems at home for ourselves and to share with the world. We can't just be creating a big market for Silicon Valley.
And finally, global governance. India must take the lead here. Like I said, international institutions are outdated.
Our G20 presidency showed the world what is possible. We brought the African Union into the fold. In a divided world, India has emerged as a bridging power.
And increasingly, the world has come to value this role. You see countries across Africa, Latin America, Asia, they're looking for partners. They're not looking for powers that offer them binary choices.
They want partners who respect their sovereignty, who share with them practical development models, and I think India's experience resonates with a lot of these countries much more than Western models do. I would also like to add here that India's rise is responsible. I said that we our commitment is to national interest, but we also fulfill our international responsibility, and we showed that during the pandemic.
When vaccine nationalism was closing doors, we launched Vaccine Maitri. India sent vaccine doses and medical supplies to more than 100 countries because our strategy was solidarity. On climate, we co-founded the International Solar Alliance.
More than 100 countries are part of it. Again, this puts the Global South at the heart of the energy transition. And then, of course, our digital public goods.
Countries are increasingly learning from them and adopting them. So we don't just speak for the Global South, we also build for it. And a big part of what we're building is strength, including military strength.
India is emerging as a defense exporter. And we are offering the world systems which are affordable and reliable, and we showed what they're capable of in Operation Sindoor. The Philippines is buying our BrahMos missiles.
Many other countries have shown interest. And this is not just an export story. This also repositions India as a security provider in the region and the world.
Now, if you connect these dots, you'll see that India is not just guarding its borders, it is designing the boundaries of possibility. And to make the most of it, we have to address one more question. What does the world want from India, and what do we want from the world?
Partners want India's market, India's talent, and India's credibility. They also want India's voice. Because we can speak to Washington and Moscow, Iran and Israel, China and Japan, often in the same sentence.
Without India, there is no credible climate pathway. There is no Indo-Pacific balance. There is no resilient supply chain story.
The world needs India very much. And what do we want in return? We want respect for our choices.
We want room for our growth. We want fair rules for tech, trade, and climate. Not lectures, but latitude.
Not vetoes, but partnership. So New India must define the red lines and set expectations. And this will happen with a deeper change, which I dare say is already underway.
It is less visible than GDP, but more powerful than policy. It is the cultural code of our country that is catching up with our capabilities. We are done with self-doubt.
We don't dismiss tradition as an enemy of modernization. We don't treat ambition as arrogance. We don't confuse noise with relevance.
We are comfortable saying no when it matters, yes when it makes sense and not yet when prudence demands patience. So what is the message today?
India's rise is not inevitable. India's rise is intentional. This new India that we all dream of, that we talk about, must be built brick by brick, byte by byte.
It will take ambition. It will also take patience, boldness and humility, strength and compassion. And the world is watching us.
Some with hope, some with envy, and some with doubt. It is not our job to prove them wrong. It is our job to prove ourselves right.
Think of ourselves as a national project. Imperfect, impatient, incomplete, but unstoppable. And the world better make room because India has arrived, and it is here to stay.
Thank you.
