Opinion: Modi's Red Fort Arch – From Basics Of Past To Blocks Of Future

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From toilets to chips, from appeals to delivery, today's Red Fort vow by Modi declares a simple creed - India will build what it dreams, and defend what it builds
'By the end of this very year, a Made-in-India chip, built in India by the people of India, will arrive in the market." That single line from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12th Independence Day address today captures the audacity of India's new horizon.
Eleven years ago, his first Red Fort speech dwelled on toilets, sanitation and the shame of open defecation; he pleaded with MPs and companies to help build school toilets so daughters wouldn't drop out. That was what India of 2014 needed – fixing basics and restoring dignity.
A task which should have been completed in the first few decades of Independence itself but needed a Narendra Modi 70 years later to mainstream the topics, build a mass movement and then deliver.
Fast forward just 11 years and today's India is gearing up to build its own semiconductors, homegrown AI platforms, indigenous jet engines and an Iron Dome-like Sudarshan Chakra — because all the necessary basics have not just been painstakingly built but also delivered.
Consider the new aspirational promises that punctuated Modi's 103-minute address.
First, semiconductors, mission mode, time-bound. Modi didn't speak of a distant aspiration; he set a deadline: a Made-in-India chip this year. After 'losing 50–60 years" to missed chances, India under Modi has 'freed ourselves from this burden" and moved into execution gear. This is not techno-jingoism; it's strategic sovereignty. Chips are the arteries of the modern economy – phones, cars, power grids, missiles. If India can design and ship credible nodes at scale, it will de-risk supply chains, lift manufacturing GVA, and anchor deep R&D jobs at home. The choice of Red Fort for this pledge wasn't mere symbolism; it was a sovereign statement.
Second, a 'double Diwali" through next-generation GST reforms. 'We are bringing next-generation GST reforms. This will reduce the tax burden across the country," the PM said, explicitly signalling that daily-use items will get cheaper and relief will flow to MSMEs. An under-appreciated aspect of GST is the equitable economic development it brings since it incentivises tax at consumption site and not at manufacturing site. Further simplifying GST and reducing taxes will benefit the Eastern states, the least economically developed, the most.
Third, a jobs push with the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana, a Rs 1 lakh-crore programme launched with immediate effect that offers Rs 15,000 to youth who secure their first private-sector job, and incentives for employers. The target: 3.5 crore job opportunities. Apart from job creation, the scheme will further incentivise formalisation of the job market and create a whole new generation of consumers and economy drivers.
Fourth, the new security doctrine and technology depth. Modi drew a line in the sand to end strategic ambiguity: 'India will no longer tolerate nuclear blackmail." He coupled that with a warning that terrorists and their enablers are one and the same, and with a reiteration that India will not resume the old Indus Water status quo that disadvantaged India's own farmers. The language deployed by Modi was one of unambiguous clarity: a public doctrine of deterrence, retaliation, and the primacy of national interest.
Clarity, though, is not enough; capability must follow. Enter Mission Sudarshan Chakra — an indigenous, Iron Dome-like, multi-layered national shield to protect strategic and civilian sites and, crucially, to punish aggressors. Having spectacularly demonstrated its air defence systems in a live shooting match during Operation Sindoor, at a geographical scale at which no other country has done before, India already carries the heft to make good on this aspirational target.
Fifth, an economically reformed state. Alongside GST 2.0, the PM announced a Task Force for next-generation reforms to slash red tape, align laws to twenty-first-century needs, and push India toward Viksit Bharat by 2047. Instead of relying on the usual internal government machinery, the creation of a task force is a clear demonstration of political will and determination to get the reforms done in a specific time frame.
Sixth, a Prime Ministerial declaration to build India's own jet engine. Operation Sindoor distilled a lesson across the board: self-reliance in munitions and platforms is no longer optional. Modi thus explicitly urged young scientists and engineers to build indigenous jet engines for Indian fighters. Given the declaratory impact of a Red Fort Speech, that too from a person with proven track record of Modi, in time this could be like the Moon Mission target, which will not just spur achievement of the main target but many spin-offs as well.
Seventh, in energy, PM Modi spoke of a ten-fold expansion of nuclear capacity by 2047, the only scalable, low-carbon baseload that can partner with renewables for a 10-trillion-dollar economy. And in space, he saluted Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's ISS mission and affirmed India's march toward a home-grown space station – lighthouse programme that knits together materials science, robotics, life-support tech and private launch ecosystems.
Eighth, and indeed equally important is the announcement of Demography Mission. Gone is the squeamishness of addressing head on, a sustained 'invasion' (as the Supreme Court once described it), to irreversibly change India's civilisation. The impact of PM Modi promising it from Red Fort will percolate down the entire enforcement machinery and will come with the necessary political will as well as with the stamp of a national mission rather than isolated local level efforts.
However, none of this in 2025 would land with such force if India hadn't journeyed so far since 2014. Re-read that first Red Fort speech of PM Modi: 'Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to defecate in the open? … I call upon [everyone] to provide toilets in schools… so our daughters are not compelled to leave."
That appeal, and the intent behind it to get the basics first, informed by decades of experiential learning of a ground level activist, seeded Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala, Jan Dhan, Aadhaar-enabled DBT, rural electrification and basic housing—a decade of inclusionary plumbing without which the high-tech frontier talk today would have been performative. The last decade spent in fixing the basics gives Modi the credibility to deliver on the promises made today – for both delivery mechanism knows Modi means business and the people at large trust Modi's sequencing and timing.
There is also a politics of confidence at work. Today's Modi blended welfare (a direct transfer for first jobs), tax relief (GST 2.0), strategic autonomy (semiconductors, jet engines, nuclear and space), and hard-nosed security (Sudarshan Chakra, doctrine against blackmail). In other words: growth with guardrails. The narrative is no longer defensive–'we will catch up"-but declarative: India will set its own terms, build within its borders what it must, and compete on the frontier. That stance is amplified, not diminished, by global turbulence.
In 2014, Modi called himself the 'first servant", promising to work longer hours than the people he led. In 2025, he sounded like the chief product manager of a state-scale startup, shipping features on a tight release cycle: chip this year, GST 2.0 by Diwali, jobs scheme today, reform task force now, an air-defence platform on the roadmap, and a doctrine that tells adversaries where the red lines are. That's not bluster; it's a theory of change shaped by a decade of building foundations, and the confidence that India can finally argue on the frontier, not at the margins.
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From toilets to chips, from appeals to delivery, today's Red Fort vow by Modi declares a simple creed – India will build what it dreams, and defend what it builds.
The writer is the founding CEO of BlueKraft Digital Foundation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
August 15, 2025, 14:32 IST
News opinion Opinion: Modi's Red Fort Arch – From Basics Of Past To Blocks Of Future
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