Modi recalls 24 yrs as head of govt

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped into his 25th year of public office on Tuesday with a message on social media, recalling the October morning in 2001 when he took the oath as Gujarat's chief minister for the first time.

- HT Correspondent

"On this day in 2001, I took oath as Gujarat's Chief Minister for the first time," he wrote on social media. "Thanks to the continuous blessings of my fellow Indians, I am entering my 25th year of serving as the head of a government."

That oath had been taken in Gandhinagar, inside the austere hall of the Raj Bhavan. Outside, the state was still marked by ruins from the Bhuj earthquake that had struck nine months earlier, leaving entire neighbourhoods flattened and livelihoods erased. Political uncertainty hovered in the air; Gujarat had cycled through unstable governments, droughts and a super cyclone in the preceding years. Modi, a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and a party organiser who had never held public office, was a surprise choice as CM.

The first images of Modi as CM show him standing before the microphone, his hands folded, the oath read out line by line in Gujarati. In his post, he recalled what his mother told him that day. "I do not have much understanding of your work," she said, "but I only seek two things. First, you will always work for the poor and second, you will never take a bribe."

When he assumed office, Gujarat's villages still faced routine power cuts. Agriculture was strained by erratic rainfall and salinity in groundwater. The industrial sector, hit by the earthquake and a general lack of investment, was slow to recover. Modi's first months in power were spent touring the state's affected districts, visiting relief camps and overseeing reconstruction efforts. Out of those months grew the framework of what came to be known as the "Gujarat model," a blend of administrative centralisation, infrastructure expansion, and business-friendly governance.