Home

Featured Articles

Sep 17, 2026
YagnaSri

Governance Refined: Yogi Adityanath's Second Term, Cultural Milestones, and the Road to 2027 Part 27

The second term of Yogi Adityanath's government, which began in March 2022 and will run until early 2027, represents a phase of governance that is simultaneously more ambitious and more methodical than the first. Where the first term had been defined by the urgency of reversing two decades of accumulated governance failure — clearing the criminal networks, restoring law enforcement credibility, beginning infrastructure construction, and demonstrating that a BJP government in UP was fundamentally different from its predecessors — the second term has been characterised by the consolidation and deepening of these achievements, the pursuit of larger-scale economic development objectives, the management of political challenges including the 2024 Lok Sabha setback, and the continuing integration of UP's civilisational cultural identity with a modern development agenda. Understanding the second term's trajectory requires examining each of these dimensions in detail, with the honesty and specificity that a serious governance account demands. The Ram Mandir Consecration: History Made The single event of the second Yogi term that will be remembered longest in history was judicial and national rather than administrative and state-level: the consecration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22, 2024. The prana pratishtha ceremony, performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the presence of hundreds of saints, seers, political leaders, cultural figures, and ordinary devotees from across India, was the culmination of a movement that had begun — in its modern political form — with the RSS's early mobilisation, found institutional expression through the VHP's campaigns of the 1980s, achieved mass scale through Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990, paid its price in blood at Ayodhya in 1990 and at Karseva in 1992, and found legal vindication in the Supreme Court's unanimous 2019 verdict. For Yogi Adityanath, the Ayodhya consecration was both a personal and a civilisational culmination. As the Mahant of the Gorakhnath Math — the institution most associated with the cultural nationalism of the Hindu heartland — and as the Chief Minister of the state within which Ayodhya lies, he was the governance figure most directly responsible for the administrative preparations that made the consecration ceremony possible: the construction of the airport named after Maharishi Valmiki (the composer of the Ramayana) that brought pilgrims and dignitaries from across the country, the development of Ayodhya's road network and infrastructure, the beautification of the Ram Ki Paidi ghats, and the maintenance of law and order in a city that had been, not so many decades ago, synonymous with communal tension and political violence. Ayodhya's economic development as a pilgrimage and tourism destination is one of the most concentrated examples of the Yogi model's integration of cultural and developmental goals. The Ayodhya Development Authority's master plan, the Rs. 30,000 crore in investment commitments from private sector companies in hotels, hospitality, retail, and services around the Ram Mandir, and the projection that Ayodhya will receive over 50 crore visitors annually within the decade — rivalling the Vatican and Mecca as a global pilgrimage destination — are not merely aspirational. They represent a specific developmental bet: treating Hindu civilisational sites as serious economic assets, rather than administrative problems, generates measurable returns. The early data on Ayodhya's hotel occupancy, local employment, and small business activity in the months following the consecration confirms that the bet is paying off. Industrial Investment: The UP@1 Ambition The second Yogi term has pursued UP's industrial development with a scale and a specificity that would have been unimaginable in the SP era. The Global Investors Summit of February 2023, held in Lucknow, attracted investment commitments of Rs. 32.92 lakh crore — a figure that, even discounting for the gap between committed and actual investment that characterises all such summits, represented a genuine signal of investor confidence in UP's governance environment that no previous administration had been able to generate. The Investors Summit's sectoral composition reflected the Yogi government's specific development vision. Defence manufacturing — a sector in which the UP Defence Industrial Corridor, designated in 2018 and running through Lucknow, Kanpur, Unnao, Allahabad, Chitrakoot, and Jhansi — has emerged as one of India's principal defence production hubs. The corridor has attracted investment from major Indian defence manufacturers, including HAL, DRDO-linked companies, and international collaborators. It implements the Make in India defence policy in a state historically central to India's defence psychology (UP provides the largest proportion of Indian Army personnel of any state). The combination of UP's large skilled and semi-skilled labour force, the Yogi government's improved law and order environment, and the specific incentive framework for defence manufacturers has made the UP Defence Industrial Corridor a genuine success, not a paper project. The semiconductor and electronics manufacturing ambitions of the second term are more recent and more aspirational. Still, they reflect a forward-looking industrial strategy that goes beyond the traditional UP economic model of agriculture, small-scale manufacturing, and services. The state government's efforts to attract semiconductor investments—including discussions with global chip manufacturers about potential UP facilities—reflect an attempt to position UP in the supply chains of the fourth industrial revolution rather than remaining confined to labour-intensive, low-value manufacturing. Whether these ambitions are fully realised will depend on both the Yogi government's continued governance performance and the national semiconductor policy framework. Still, their pursuit reflects a developmental seriousness that UP's governance had not previously exhibited. The Expressway Economy: Connectivity as Development The completion of the Ganga Expressway in the second term is the period's most significant single infrastructure achievement. At 594 kilometres, it is India's longest expressway, connecting Meerut in the west to Prayagraj in the east through the districts of Hapur, Bulandshahr, Amroha, Sambhal, Badaun, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi, Unnao, Rae Bareli, and Pratapgarh — a geography that encompasses some of the most densely populated, developmentally lagged, and historically neglected districts of UP. The expressway's economic logic is not merely about transportation speed: it is about transforming UP's economic geography through logistics connectivity. Districts that were previously two or three days away from major manufacturing and consumption centres by road are now connected within hours. Agricultural produce from Rae Bareli can reach Meerut's cold storage and processing facilities before it spoils. Industrial goods from Meerut's established manufacturing base can reach Prayagraj's markets in a fraction of the previous transit time. Land value appreciation along the expressway corridor, planned warehouse and logistics park investments at junction points, and industrial estate development promoted by the state government along the corridor are all manifestations of the development multiplier that major infrastructure creates. The second term has also seen the conceptual planning and initial development work for the next generation of UP's expressway network: the Gorakhpur Link Expressway connecting the Purvanchal Expressway to the Nepal border region, the Bundelkhand Expressway connecting Chitrakoot to the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, and the planned Ring Road developments around Lucknow and Varanasi. These projects, if completed as planned, will give UP the most comprehensive intra-state highway network of any major Indian state — a physical infrastructure transformation with lasting consequences for the state's economic geography far beyond any individual government's tenure. The Post-2024 Recalibration: Reaching the Communities That Moved Away The 2024 Lok Sabha setback produced a specific organisational recalibration in the second Yogi term's political strategy. The government identified the communities whose BJP support had eroded—non-Jatav Dalit communities in eastern UP, Jat farmers in western UP, and certain non-Yadav OBC communities in seats that changed hands—and developed targeted governance and communication strategies to address their concerns. For the non-Jatav Dalit communities, the 'Constitution in danger' narrative reached most effectively, the response has combined direct administrative engagement with targeted welfare. The government's acceleration of PM Awas Yojana construction in SC-concentrated villages, the prioritisation of road construction under PM Gram Sadak Yojana in SC hamlets, and the specific attention to Dalit atrocity cases — the guarantee that FIRs against accused perpetrators (regardless of community) will be registered and investigated — have been backed by administrative monitoring mechanisms that the SP era's politicised police force had made impossible. The Jat farmer community's concerns about agricultural policy — which had been inflamed by the farm law protests and partially addressed by the laws' withdrawal — have been further addressed through the second term's agricultural support measures: the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi's continued payment to farmer bank accounts, the expanded coverage of crop insurance, the improved functioning of agricultural procurement systems that reduced the dependence on commission agents, and the specific infrastructure investments in western UP's irrigation and cold storage networks. Whether these measures will be sufficient to restore the Jat community's pre-2020 BJP consolidation is a question that the 2027 elections will answer. The 2027 Horizon: What the BJP Must Demonstrate With the 2027 UP Assembly elections on the horizon, the Yogi government's second term is increasingly being assessed through the lens of what it must demonstrate to sustain the BJP's UP dominance against an opposition that has found new organisational energy from the 2024 Lok Sabha result. The political challenges are real and specific: the SP's improved performance has renewed its organisational confidence; the Congress's continued presence in the SP alliance provides it a degree of UP relevance that its own organisation cannot generate; and the BJP's 2024 losses in SC-heavy constituencies have created a specific vulnerability that the opposition will attempt to exploit. The BJP's response has been to focus the second term's remaining years on delivering visible, measurable governance improvements in the specific domains where the 2024 losses were concentrated. The anti-corruption drive has intensified in eastern UP districts, where patronage networks that survived from the SP era created local anti-incumbency against BJP MLAs. The infrastructure construction in these districts — expressway access points, road connectivity within districts, health infrastructure — has been prioritised. Specific communication strategy around reservations and constitutional protection has been strengthened through a nationwide Samvidhan Suraksha (Constitution Protection) campaign that proactively addresses the opposition's misinformation before it takes root. The second Yogi term is, in the final analysis, a governance government engaged in the unglamorous but essential work of converting election mandates into lasting institutional change. The transformation of UP's political culture — from the patronage-appeasement model of the SP and BSP era to a governance model rooted in rule of law, equal citizenship, and developmental investment — is a project measured in decades rather than electoral cycles. The first term showed the transformation was possible; the second term is showing it is sustainable. The 2027 elections will determine whether the people of UP deliver a third consecutive mandate to continue the journey. Rule of Law and Transformation: Yogi Adityanath's First Term and the Remaking of Uttar Pradesh (2017–2022) Part 26 https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/rule-of-law-and-transformation-yogi-adityanaths-first-term-and-the-remaking-of-uttar-pradesh-20172022-part-26

Sep 16, 2026
Ramaharitha Pusarla

India’s BRICS Diplomacy: Acumen, Foresight and Strategic Resilience

BRICS chairmanship returns to India after 2021, with New Delhi setting the stage for the 18th Edition of the BRICS+ Summit from September 12-13. Dismissed as a divergent group, analysts often downplayed BRICS. However, representing 49.5% of humanity, accounting for 26% of international trade and 40% of global GDP, the BRICS+ is now a counterweight to the G7, surpassing it in population and purchasing power output. Statistical comparisons, made in the face, often come with an agenda. Commentariat, ahead of the New Delhi BRICS Summit, attempted to project it as an alternative to the US-led order or anti-West. Dismantling these narratives, India, the current chair of BRICS, in a strong demonstration of its multi-alignment policy, hosted the Quad sherpas meeting on September 3rd, ahead of the BRICS Summit. Even as India welcomed the BRICS delegation, Indian forces held bilateral exercises Veer Guardian 2026 and Yudh Abhyas with Japan and the United States, respectively. India’s independent foreign policy has always stood for alliance with none and alignment with all. Reflecting it in true spirit, the New Delhi declaration resting on the four pillars of - Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability reinforced the need for an inclusive multilateralism anchored in 3Rs -Representative, Responsible and Rules-based multipolar world order with the United Nations at its centre. Unequivocally, positioning BRICS as a non-Western grouping, India has attempted to forge cooperation between countries to work for their common interests. The thoughtfully conceived theme of the 18th BRICS Summit, “Building Resilience through Cooperation and Innovation for Sustainability”, is an acronym of BRICS. The BRICS, which has now emerged as the representative of the Global South, is seeking a restructuring in tandem with the contemporary realities. Coming at a time when nations are fraught with conflicts, India’s chairship faced the indomitable challenge of bringing the diverse group of countries to a basic common denominator. The BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting held in May at the height of the Middle East crisis failed to reach a consensus over the language. Member countries Iran and the UAE sharply differed over references to Palestine and the Red Sea. Though Indian diplomats tried to bridge the differences, the meeting failed to ensure a joint outcome. Hence, in the lead-up to the BRICS Summit, BRICS Sherpas burnt the midnight oil to overcome differences and bring out a balanced text. Through sustained consultations, India has built a consensus among the members. Pulling a major diplomatic feat, the eleven BRICS member countries unanimously approved the declaration on the first day of the summit. In 2023, India pulled off a major diplomatic victory during its G20 presidency by forging an early consensus and adopting the declaration on the first day of the Summit. Replicating the same template, India has meticulously managed the contradictions on all major contentious issues. Back then, the previous 2022 Bali G20 edition failed to arrive at a joint declaration due to the hard positions of G7 members and the Russia-China duo over the Ukraine War. Successfully wielding the lever of global interests of the Global South and announcing African Union membership to G20, India has pulled off the impossible feat of avoiding condemning Russia, while stressing the inviolability of the “territorial integrity” of countries. Evolving into a multi-continental grouping, BRICS is by far the most diverse group. A diverse group can either become a melting pot of integration or can crumble under the weight of disagreements. With BRICS member countries embroiled in ongoing conflicts, the current edition of the summit faced an additional challenge of coordination and cooperation. Turning this diversity into strength, India has managed to bring consensus in a highly polarised world order. The 45-page document with 140 paragraphs is a true testimony to India’s astute diplomatic skills. Hosting the BRICS Summit for the fourth time, India has expanded the scale through wide-ranging sectoral engagements. Holding 400 meetings across 30 cities through ministerial tracks, business and joint working groups, India has made BRICS more development-oriented. BRICS, primarily a group evolved for coordinating economic policy of Emerging Markets and Developing Countries (EMDCs), has, through sustained dialogue and subsequent expansion, BRICS+ has become a channel for advancing the interests of the Global South. Positioning development as the cornerstone of BRICS during its chairship, India gave a productive direction to the grouping. Even as Trump has been sharpening knives over dedollarisation, proposing 100% tariffs against BRICS countries, to the utter dismay of Breaking News frenzy media, the New Delhi declaration made no mention of a common currency. Acknowledging “no one size fits all approach”, the declaration, quietly advancing structural de-dollarisation, made a local currency pivot and encouraged the New Development Bank to expand financing in local currencies. Steering the course for an equitable and inclusive world where the interests of the Global South and EMDCs receive meaningful participation, BRICS called for representative participation for all stakeholders. While the economic centre of gravity has drifted to the East, the power still rests with the West-controlled institutions and systems. Reiterating the need to reform the existing systems, the New Delhi BRICS declaration called for a review of quotas for the IMF and the World Bank and a two-tier dispute resolution system in the WTO. The New Delhi Declaration, laid out under three sub-themes- Inclusive Global Governance and Strengthening Multilateralism, International and regional peace and security and Strengthening cultural and people-to-people cooperation have credibly underlined India’s motto for BRICS: “shared vision into win-win cooperation”. Charting a development-oriented future course for BRICS, India has spearheaded the establishment of collaborative platforms such as the BRICS Vaccine R&D Centre, BRICS Food Grain Exchange, BRICS AGRIN (Agro-Inputs, Genetic Resources, and Information Network), BRICS CONNECT for Skilling, BRICS MSME Cooperation Portal, BRICS Incubator Network, BRICS Startup Innovation Fund, BRICS Science and Research Repository and adopted the BRICS Youth Cooperative Framework. Ukraine War and the Iran War have exacerbated the energy security vulnerabilities of the Global South underscoring the need for greater and strategic preparedness. In response, India has initiated the BRICS Digital Centre of Excellence for Smart Grids and Energy Storage under the Smart Grids Workstream of the BRICS Energy Research Cooperation Platform (ERCP) for reliable, efficient, clean and accessible energy sources. Resilience, however, extends beyond energy security. It comes from identifying emerging challenges and preparing well for them in advance. In this spirit, BRICS countries supported India’s proposal for BRICS Integrated Early Warning System and the BRICS Logistics Supply Chain Cooperation Framework. Pitching for inclusive global governance, the New Delhi Declaration called for a Woman UN Secretary-General, reiterated India and Brazil’s membership in the expanded UNSC, supported Iran and Ethiopia’s bid for WTO accession and strongly condemned the unilateral tariffs and coercive measures inconsistent with WTO rules. On the security front, the strongest condemnation of the Pahalgam attacks in Jammu & Kashmir is a notable diplomatic win for India. The conflict in the Middle East, which has severely impacted the BRICS countries, received wide attention, with members expressing serious concerns over continued escalation and stressing the need to maintain smooth trade flow. Collectively, the group has reaffirmed support for Palestinian statehood, an unwavering commitment to a two-state solution with East Jerusalem and rejected unilateral measures to change the historical status of Jerusalem. Prioritising consensus-building, while acknowledging different positions of countries on regional conflicts, India brought out a joint declaration which has put economic and development aspects at the forefront. Summit ideas can quickly fade away, and initial momentum might wane. To take these ideas forward, PM Modi proposed a BRICS Continuity and Implementation Mechanism, a Troika System, for a systematic follow-up of outcomes and implementation. Troika, comprising the preceding, current and future presidencies, has been the typical operating mechanism of G20. Resisting domination by any power, India has offered countries a safe space to explore solutions for contemporary global challenges. Without pushing any agenda, India fostered “inclusive, mutually beneficial and development-oriented partnerships”. Respecting different perspectives, India built consensus among the BRICS’ conflicting members. Without donning the mediation mantle or making a brouhaha, India quietly facilitated meaningful consultations to resolve the Gulf crisis. The diplomatic engagement between Iran President Pezeshkian and Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit, resulted in both parties agreeing to “put the past behind” and mend ties. Looking beyond differences, PM Modi and President Xi, who visited India after seven years, held bilateral talks, vowing to “be sensitive to each other’s core issues”. Turning BRICS into a platform of cooperation and collaboration, PM Modi held 15 bilateral talks with heads of state and government, world leaders and heads of international institutions. India and Russia set a $100 billion bilateral trade target, discussed alternative payments, mobility and critical minerals. Bilateral talks with the UAE yielded $11.5 billion investment in an integrated greenfield project in Odisha. PM Modi reviewed the strategic partnership with his South African counterpart. India has always believed in diverse partnerships to pursue its core interests- but never allowed anyone to veto its growth and development. BRICS declaration had, in essence, reflected the same policy. The members resolutely rejected unilateralism of the West, condemned tariffs, sanctions and Europe’s discriminatory Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). India’s G20 Presidency has set a new benchmark with high standards, impactful outcomes and masterful execution. Acting as a moderate power, India steered BRICS towards resilience, cooperation and innovation rather than turning it into a geopolitical battle. Rejecting binding loyalties, India is using these multilateral groups to build partnerships and engage with different countries, widening its horizons and, in the process, accumulating significant diplomatic heft.