In July 2013, long before he was Prime Minister, Narendra Modi came to Puri during the Rath Yatra, offered prayers at the Gundicha Temple and spent about twenty minutes with the Trinity. He then spoke to reporters in Odia. He chanted “Jai Jagannath, Bande Utkal Janani” and said that he had come from Somnath Dham to seek the blessings of Lord Jagannath for the development of the nation. He also spoke of the contribution of Odias to the development of Gujarat.
I have thought about that afternoon often, because on September 17 the Prime Minister turns 76, and birthdays are a natural moment to ask what, if anything, that early affection came to mean for Odisha. What has struck me most, as someone who has had the opportunity to work in public life and now serves as Chief Minister, is the extraordinary breadth of Narendra Modi’s engagement with that transformation.
He speaks to ordinary citizens on Mann Ki Baat, giving space to their stories, ideas and achievements; in Parliament, he engages in difficult debates on the direction of the country; abroad, he carries India’s interests and ambitions to the world’s most powerful capitals. Only days ago, at the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, we saw that same breadth of vision on the world stage, as India under his leadership spoke for its interests while arguing for a greater voice for the Global South in shaping the global order.
The decade has seen a pandemic, wars and geopolitical upheavals, global economic uncertainty and challenges that could easily have diverted a nation’s attention from its long-term goals. Yet, India’s development journey did not stand still.
The country moved from being counted among the Fragile Five to becoming the world’s Top Five. Infrastructure expanded, digital public systems transformed the way citizens interact with the state, millions gained access to basic services, and India acquired a greater confidence in its ability to compete, negotiate and lead in the world.
I believe that transformation came to mean a great deal for Odisha. It today stands as the only state in the country where India’s first compound semiconductor fabrication unit and first 3D glass-substrate packaging facility are being established.
The Union Cabinet’s approval of semiconductor units in our state, the proposed dedicated Rare Earth Corridor, and the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri-Paradip Economic Corridor together reflect the industrial direction of a state that has long exported its mineral wealth but has had limited value addition within the state.
None of this happened in isolation. It happened because the Centre chose to treat eastern India’s rise as central to the national growth story rather than incidental to it. That is what Purvodaya means in practice: expanding port capacity at Paradip, developing LNG terminals at Paradip and Gopalpur, backing the Bahuda Port and Mahanadi riverine shipbuilding projects, and pushing railway works worth over `90,000 crore that are steadily improving connectivity across the state.
A region that spent decades supplying minerals to the rest of the country while capturing too little of the value for itself is now being encouraged to become an investment destination in its own right.
A three-day roadshow our delegation recently completed across Abu Dhabi and Dubai came back with proposals worth roughly Rs 2.43 lakh crore and eight signed MoUs, with the potential to generate well over eight lakh jobs. A decade ago, an Odisha delegation courting Gulf sovereign wealth funds would have been a novelty. Today it is simply part of the calendar.
The part of this decade that I understand most personally, though, is not the infrastructure. It is the idea that where you are born should not decide how far you can go. I come from a small tribal village in Keonjhar. My own path to this office is, to me, evidence that Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas is not a slogan repeated at rallies.
Odisha’s tribal communities make up nearly a quarter of our population, and for too long they were treated chiefly as a welfare category rather than as partners in planning, industry and infrastructure. That has changed. PM-JANMAN has reached some of our most vulnerable tribal communities directly.
Odisha will complete a hundred years since its formation within the coming decade. We have set ourselves the target of a Samruddh Odisha by 2036, built to feed directly into the PM’s own vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047. I do not think that alignment is an accident, nor is it owed to any one scheme or announcement. It goes back to a leader who treated a state that had long remained on the margins of the national conversation as though it already had a central role to play in India’s future.
Twelve years later, that belief has become an opportunity before us. On his 76th birthday, as Chief Minister of Odisha, I believe the most meaningful tribute we can offer is to work towards proving that belief right. Our responsibility is to build the Samruddh Odisha that can make a meaningful contribution to his vision of a Viksit Bharat.
Jai Jagannath. Jai Hind.
