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A very warm welcome once again to the Honorable Ministers, Honorable Justices, India's leading economists, constitutional law experts, distinguished public service leaders, captains of industry, doyens of your respective domains—those amongst us today and those who will be joining us through the course of the day. Uh, thank you for joining us for the 103rd SKOCH Summit.

Modinomics: A Journey of Inclusive Growth is an important book for India, and it's more than just a book. It's a comprehensive account of Prime Minister Modi's 25 years in public office and an in-depth verdict on his promise of inclusive growth. From his early days in Gujarat to over a decade of national leadership, Mr. Modi has consistently placed the idea of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas at the heart of governance.

This book explores how that philosophy translated into policies and programs that reshaped India's economic and social landscape through financial inclusion, direct benefit transfers, housing, rural electrification, sanitation, healthcare, digital empowerment and infrastructure expansion. Millions who had long remained on the margins were brought into the fold of development by connecting households with banking through the Jan Dhan Yojana, ensuring clean cooking fuel through Ujjwala, building toilets under Swachh Bharat, electrifying villages and expanding digital access. Modi Ji's governance reached the last mile both with scale and speed.

Equally, the book assesses the reforms that powered India's macroeconomic resilience—GST, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, digital payments architecture, the welfare delivery systems that made growth more transparent, efficient and accountable. At the same time, it doesn't shy away from asking the central question: has growth been truly inclusive, and to what extent have India's poorest experienced transformation in their everyday lives?

Balancing this narrative with evidence, Modinomics places India's journey in a global context, highlighting a country once defined by poverty and scarcity which has increasingly become associated with opportunity, aspiration and scale. Marking a quarter century of Modi Ji in governance, this book is both a chronicle and a verdict—measuring the distance traveled, the promises kept and the challenges that remain.

It is an essential read for policymakers, scholars, business leaders and citizens who wish to understand not just the economics of Modi but the larger story of India's quest for inclusive and sustainable governance.

And how we thought we'll structure this book discussion today is by sharing some reflections from the very book that was released a little earlier. So what we've done is we've highlighted certain quotes from the book which I'll be reading out, and post which I'll be inviting discussions to comment. But at the very opening, let me invite Mr. Sameer Kochhar, Chairman SKOCH Group and the author of Modinomics: A Journey of Inclusive Growth, for his remarks.

Participants at the Social Contract of Business & Governance