India, Oct. 14 -- "The land north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bharata, where the descendants of Bharata dwell." - Vishnu Purana In February 2016, Prime Minister(PM) Narendra Modi touched the feet of a woman more than a hundred years old. Kunwar Bai Yadav of Kotabharri village, in Chhattisgarh's Dhamtari district, owned about two dozen goats - the savings of a long life. She sold seven of them to build a toilet at home. Her example helped hervillage end open defecation. For any household in India, four things decide whether life is secure: the kitchen, the toilet, the doctor's bill, and the meansto earn. For generations, each was asource of drudgery or dread for poorhouseholds. In the Andamans, AVenkatalakshmi cooked on a wood-fired chulha until a gas connection under Ujjwala freed her from harmful smoke. In Meghalaya, Pooja Thapa paid nothing for kidney-stonesurgery under Ayushman Bharat. In Manali, a Mudra loan of Rs.2.5 lakh enabled a vegetable-seller to open a ration shop of her own. All these women lacked access, not aspiration. For decades, the poor were handed relief without choice or voice. Our nation-builders never accepted this development model. Mahatma Gandhi wanted an India "in which the poorest shall have an effective voice". Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya put forward the idea ofantyodaya, the rise of the last person. PM Modi has turned this philosophy into a method of governance. Its focus is the poor, women, the young, and farmers. Its standard is saturation for every eligible household. Its instrument is direct delivery, so that what the State sends is what the citizen receives. In 1985, the then PM admitted that only about 15 paise of every rupee meant for the poor reached them. Today, through Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and the mobile phone, nearly Rs.50 lakh crore has gone straight to beneficiaries' accounts. The scale has no parallel in any democracy. The governance focus has changed from welfare to empowerment. Each scheme removes one barrier. Together, they form a ladder: from security to capability, opportunity, self-reliance and, finally, to participation. Ujjwala began in the kitchen and ended up changing the household. More than 105 million poor women have received deposit-free LPG connections. Swachh Bharat restored dignity. Rural India became defecation free by 2019. Nearly 120 million household toilets have now been built, and with the provision of izzat ghars, daughters need no longer wait for nightfall. Under Ayushman Bharat, 120 million hospital admissions have availed of the scheme's cashless cover of up to Rs.5 lakh a year per family, bringing down out-of-pocket health spending from 64% in 2013-14 to about 43% in 2022-23. MUDRA, through its silent revolution, opened the doors of the bank. It provides funds to all eligible, who were once deemed un-bankable. More than 590 million collateral-free loans have been sanctioned; this credit comes through India's own Mudra Card, a RuPay card, which ensures that the data of all transactions remains within India.With free accident insurance of up to Rs.2 lakh and no merchant fee, the indigenous RuPay payment card has taken a significant leap from local to global - empowering India's last mile to be accepted in over 180+ countries worldwide. Beneath all this lies an economictransformation of a scale India had never seen. In rupee terms, the economy has nearly tripled since 2013-14, to Rs.331 lakh crore, powered by a massive expansion in road networks to take farmers' produceto distant markets, 223,000 startups that have created over 2.3 million jobs, and women's participation in the workforce almost doubling in six years, amongother factors. More than 30 millionrural women have become Lakhpati Didis through self-help groups. A bank account for every home,money that moves without middlemen, and a ration card that works for a migrant worker in any state are what Nobel-winning economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson call "inclusive institutions" that are the bedrock of prosperous nations. When citizens see that the nation works for them, their sense of belonging deepens, and that belonging becomes the foundation for the next round of reform. Swachh Bharat turned that belonging into a public movement - Jan Bhagidari,a governance model in which citizensare active producers of economic andpolitical capital. This is at the heart of the PM's visionof Viksit Bharat: Inclusive and Collective. "Resolve for a Viksit Bharat will befulfilled only when development reaches the last person," he says, emphasising thatViksit Bharat will be realised through sabka prayas (with the contribution, efforts, and participation of 140 crore people of our nation). This is a nation whose progress will be written by many hands. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China achieved unprecedented change only when each gave its last citizen something to own, something to learn, or something to decide. "This is the period in the history of India," the PM has said, "when the country is going to take a quantum leap." That leap must be made with the consent of the governed, which is why the goal is not only a Viksit Bharat, but a Sashakt Bharat. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam asked Indians to dream, because dreams become thoughts and thoughts become action. This tenet has been lived by PM Modi in its truest sense. There are, as Robert Frost wrote, "miles to go before I sleep," and the journey will be complete only when every citizen has some ownership in it. Kunwar Bai Yadav passed away in 2018, at the age of 106. With seven goats, she brought dignity to her family, and her example moved a whole village. Schemes give citizens like her the toolsto build the nation. That is nation-building in the true sense. That is the Bharat weare building together: not only viksitbut also sashakt....