India, June 13 -- Pandit Nehru's India asked what the state could allocate. Modi-ji's Bharat asks what the state can deliver, and insists on showing the receipt.

On 10 June 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed his 4,399th consecutive day in office, one more than Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru served from his first elected government in 1952 until his death in 1964. The qualifier is worth keeping, because Pandit Nehru, measured from 1947, still holds the record for the longest unbroken tenure. What Modi-ji has surpassed is the mark for the longest continuous tenure of an elected head of government in the Republic's history. I have spent my working life inside the state that lies between those two dates, and the milestone interests me les...