It is the hour of milestones for the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is celebrating its 12th year in power in Delhi. For the BJP, the icing on the cake though is its tallest leader achieving yet another feather on his cap: Narendra Modi has become the longest-serving continuously elected prime minister for India. This is no mean achievement. In an era marked by fragmenting public patience for parties and leaders, Mr Modi has enjoyed an electoral longevity that must be envied by his opponents. Massive public endorsement for the prime minister has been the principal factor in this. During this long span, Mr Modi has been instrumental in ushering tectonic changes. The BJP — its electoral triumphs are proof — can, today, justifiably claim to be the natural party of governance for the country. It has deepened its footprints in large chunks of territory — Bengal, Odisha, the Northeast are examples — that had remained elusive. This was inconceivable even a decade ago and Mr Modi’s contribution to the party’s ascendancy has been phenomenal. The prime minister and his party have also succeeded in shifting India’s ideological temperament to the Right in another break from the past. Another notable success has been the BJP’s social engineering to find a balance between its traditional upper-caste voter blocs and the other backward classes and Dalits. The prime minister’s clever harnessing of his own social identity has played a role in this.

This is not to suggest that Mr Modi’s performance has been perfect. Perhaps the biggest blot on his record is his multiple failures on the economic front. From joblessness to inequality to tardy reforms, just to name a few, India has not been able to harness its true economic potential under his watch. The republic’s pluralistic social framework is under immense strain, thanks to Mr Modi’s pursuit of a majoritarian, polarising agenda. Worryingly, allegations of institutional partisanship are on the rise. And for all his global voyages, Indian diplomacy, it is being feared, is losing its autonomous edge. New Delhi has isolated some of its oldest allies; the warmth and leverage that India enjoyed even in its own neighbourhood seem to have been sacrificed at the altar of a transactional approach. Whether Mr Modi is able to achieve course correction on these troublesome fronts may determine the remaining duration of his stint at the helm.