Let three numbers tell the story first: 12, 13, and 100. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns to Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce on Saturday evening for the institution’s centenary celebrations, it’ll mark 13 years since an address at the same college that was widely read as the launchpad for his projection as the BJP’s prime ministerial face.
He would go on to mark another year as CM before taking the chair in Delhi. He spoke in Hindi, saying, “I am concerned that a section of our society, and especially people in the political world, see the country’s youth as merely ‘new-age voters’. I want my country to accept that our youth are ‘new-Age power’. This demographic argument became a staple of his campaign. He recounted a conversation with a foreign diplomat in which he spoke about India’s untapped potential. That lecture was defined also by an image. “I am someone who sees a path different from both of those paths. I have a third way of thinking, that this glass is full, half with water and half with air.
The last time was in February 2013, when Modi came to SRCC as the chief minister of Gujarat, weeks into his fourth term in Gandhinagar and yet to be named his party’s candidate for national office. He was in his 12th year as CM, having first taken office in October 2001. On Saturday, he returned to the same campus with 12 years as prime minister behind him, in his third consecutive term, having led the BJP to victories in 2014, 2019 and 2024. Next month, he also completes 25 years as head of government, as CM or PM. “My country is the world’s youngest, with 65 per cent of the population below the age of 35. Among anecdotes, Modi described a visit to Taiwan roughly 15 years earlier, before he became chief minister.
Europe is ageing, China has aged,” he’d said, adding that India’s misfortune was its inability to use “such a large demographic scope”. Holding up a glass of water, Modi said optimists would call it half full and pessimists half empty. He said an interpreter there had asked him on the last day of the tour whether India was still a country of snake-charmers, ghosts and superstition, a stereotype attributed to foreign literature and movies. “I told her, our ancestors may have been snake-charmers… Now we are mouse-charmers,” he said, adding that young Indians with a hand on a computer mouse now had the power to move the world.
