How India Built a Doctrine of Resilience under Narendra Modi

From floods, earthquakes and pandemics to terrorism, border confrontations, wars, energy shocks and tariff coercion, India’s crisis record since 2014 reveals both an increasingly capable state and the high price of its remaining weaknesses.

What constitutes successful leadership in an age of permanent crisis? Is success the prevention of every calamity, or the capacity to stop calamity from becoming collapse? Should a government be judged only by the lives it saves, or also by the suffering it fails to anticipate? Can national resilience be claimed when the economy survives but citizens pay an unbearable human cost? Above all, did India merely endure the upheavals of 2014–2026, or did adversity fundamentally alter the character of the Indian state?

Narendra Modi assumed office in May 2014 promising decisive governance. He could scarcely have anticipated the succession of ordeals that would test that promise: devastating floods, cyclones, earthquakes, droughts, terror attacks, border confrontations, a once-in-a-century pandemic, disrupted supply chains, stranded citizens in foreign war zones, oil shocks, communal violence, agrarian unrest, aviation tragedy, global tariff coercion and an increasingly unstable Himalayan ecology.

Few Indian governments have faced such a compressed sequence of national and international emergencies. Yet history must resist the temptation to turn crisis management into either propaganda or prosecution. It would be dishonest to claim that the Modi government prevailed flawlessly in every emergency. COVID-19’s second wave, the migrant exodus, the continuing tragedy of Manipur, the Maha Kumbh crowd crush and persistent failures of urban and Himalayan planning cannot be transformed into victories by political vocabulary.

Nevertheless, the larger record reveals something consequential. India gradually moved from improvised reaction toward a recognizable doctrine of resilience built around six capabilities: centralized political direction, whole-of-government mobilization, military-civilian coordination, digital welfare delivery, calibrated strategic autonomy, and rapid evacuation diplomacy. The achievement was not that India escaped injury. It was that repeated shocks did not cause national disintegration, economic insolvency or strategic capitulation.

2014–2016: A Government Introduced to Crisis

The Modi government’s first major disaster arrived within months. The Jammu and Kashmir floods of September 2014 submerged large parts of Srinagar, paralyzed hospitals and communications, and killed more than 200 people on the Indian side by later estimates. The armed forces, National Disaster Response Force and civilian agencies rescued tens of thousands. By the time waters receded, the episode had revealed two contrasting truths: India possessed formidable military rescue capacity, but its civilian disaster institutions and urban flood planning remained inadequate. Contemporary research later found that local communities and volunteers performed an estimated 74 percent of rescues — a reminder that governmental narratives should not erase citizen courage.

Cyclone Hudhud struck Andhra Pradesh and Odisha the following month, bringing winds of approximately 200 kilometers per hour and inflicting enormous damage, particularly on Visakhapatnam. Advance warnings, mass evacuation, military deployment and restoration operations helped contain fatalities compared with earlier Indian supercyclones. The response also demonstrated the value of investments made over several governments in cyclone shelters, evacuation roads, Doppler radars and disaster-preparedness systems.

Modi did not create India’s entire disaster-response architecture in 2014. His government inherited the NDRF, the National Disaster Management Authority and lessons from Odisha’s earlier cyclones. Its contribution was to use, expand and increasingly integrate them. The following year widened the theatre from domestic emergency management to international humanitarian action.

When Yemen descended into war in 2015, Operation Raahat extracted Indians through a complex air-and-sea bridge involving the Navy, Air Force, Air India and diplomatic coordination through Djibouti. According to the government’s parliamentary statement, 4,741 Indians and 1,947 foreign nationals were evacuated. India was no longer rescuing only its own citizens; nationals from dozens of countries sought Indian assistance. Ministry of External Affairs records document the naval component of the operation.

Weeks later, the Nepal earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people. India launched Operation Maitri within hours, deploying aircraft, helicopters, NDRF personnel, engineers, medical teams and relief supplies. More than 43,000 Indians returned by land and 9,509 people were evacuated by air, according to the International Organization for Migration’s account. Operation Maitri became an early demonstration of India’s emerging “first responder” role in the neighborhood.

Success abroad, however, stood beside painful vulnerability at home. The 2015 heatwave killed more than 2,000 people, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Chennai’s floods later that year killed hundreds, disrupted basic services for millions and exposed the lethal combination of extreme rainfall, wetland encroachment, inadequate drainage and unplanned urbanization.

In 2016, the Kollam temple fire, Cyclone Vardah and recurring drought conditions again demanded federal assistance. Security crises were still more politically consequential. The Pathankot attack in January was followed by the Uri assault in September, in which 19 Indian soldiers were killed. India responded with publicly announced “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control. The operation did not eliminate cross-border terrorism. It did, however, revise India’s signaling doctrine: terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistani territory could invite limited conventional retaliation below the threshold of full-scale war. That shift would reappear at Balakot in 2019 and under Operation Sindoor in 2025.

2017–2019: Standing Firm Without Losing Control

The 73-day Doklam confrontation of 2017 tested a different capability. Indian troops intervened after Chinese road construction threatened to alter the strategic geography near the India-Bhutan-China trijunction. New Delhi refused to abandon Bhutan, resisted intense rhetorical pressure from Beijing and simultaneously kept diplomatic channels open. The August disengagement restored immediate stability without armed conflict. Brookings described the diplomatic resolution as deserving relief while emphasizing that resolve depended upon both military and diplomatic capability. Its assessment remains a useful antidote to simplistic victory claims.

Doklam established a pattern that became central to Modi-era statecraft: visible firmness combined with negotiations conducted away from television cameras.

Natural disasters continued. Cyclone Ockhi in 2017 killed fishermen across southern India and exposed weaknesses in last-mile warnings. Kerala’s 2018 floods — the worst in nearly a century — claimed close to 500 lives and displaced more than one million. The response involved the Kerala government, armed forces, NDRF, Coast Guard, fishermen, voluntary organizations and ordinary citizens. It was a national mobilization, not a one-party achievement. The NDRF evacuated more than 24,000 people, while the armed services and civilian agencies rescued many thousands more.

The year also brought the Nipah outbreak in Kerala. State health authorities, supported by central institutions, contained a virus with a high fatality rate through contact tracing, isolation, surveillance and credible public communication. The episode offered a model of cooperative federalism that India would desperately need two years later.

Economically, the period was less triumphant. Demonetization and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) created substantial disruption. Because these were governmental choices rather than external disasters, they cannot honestly be listed as adversities conquered by the government. The informal economy bore considerable adjustment costs. The IL&FS default of 2018 then intensified non-bank financial-sector stress.

Yet the government and Reserve Bank eventually undertook bank recapitalization, insolvency reform, recognition of bad loans and consolidation. Public-sector bank gross non-performing assets subsequently declined from 9.11 percent in March 2021 to 2.58 percent by March 2025. Government and RBI data suggest that a banking weakness accumulated over many years was substantially reduced, although insolvency delays and credit concentration remain concerns.

Then came Pulwama. On February 14, 2019, a suicide bombing killed 40 CRPF personnel. India’s Balakot airstrike crossed a geographical and psychological threshold by targeting a suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed facility inside Pakistan rather than Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The government described it as a non-military pre-emptive action. The Foreign Secretary’s statement recorded the official rationale.

Independent assessments disputed the extent of physical damage at Balakot. An Indian MiG-21 was lost, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was captured and later released, and an Indian helicopter was mistakenly brought down by friendly fire. The episode therefore cannot be narrated as an immaculate military triumph. Its strategic importance lay elsewhere: India showed that Pakistan’s nuclear capability would no longer automatically prevent conventional Indian retaliation.

Cyclone Fani in May 2019 demonstrated a more measurable success. Odisha evacuated roughly 1.2 million people before landfall. Although 64 people died and economic damage was substantial, the casualty count was dramatically lower than in the 1999 Odisha supercyclone, which killed approximately 10,000. The World Bank’s disaster-resilience assessment illustrates how forecasting, shelters, local administration and public cooperation saved lives. This was resilience as institution-building rather than spectacle.

2020–2021: The Pandemic and the Himalayan Reckoning

Nothing tested the Indian state like COVID-19. The nationwide lockdown announced in March 2020 may have delayed transmission and allowed limited health capacity to be expanded. It was also implemented with extraordinarily little notice. Factories, transport networks and livelihoods stopped almost overnight. Millions of migrant workers found themselves without income, shelter or a safe means of returning home. Their journeys on foot became the defining moral image of the first lockdown.

India’s real GDP contracted by 7.7 percent in FY2020–21, according to the Economic Survey. The official summary acknowledged the especially severe impact on manufacturing, construction and contact-intensive services. The government responded through credit guarantees, liquidity measures, rural employment spending, direct transfers, free cooking gas and a massive food-security program. PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana ultimately provided free grain to approximately 813.5 million beneficiaries. The Department of Food and Public Distribution confirms that scale. Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar authentication, mobile connectivity and digitized ration systems allowed assistance to be delivered with a speed that would have been difficult a decade earlier.

Vande Bharat Mission and Operation Samudra Setu brought stranded citizens home from across the world. By September 23, 2020, more than 1.54 million Indians had been repatriated through different modes. MEA’s briefing showed how consular protection had evolved into a large logistical capability. But the Delta wave of April–May 2021 remains the most serious qualification to any uncritical account of Modi-era crisis leadership.

Hospitals ran short of beds, medicines and medical oxygen. Crematoria overflowed. Political rallies and mass religious gatherings had continued while the threat was rising. Temporary facilities had been dismantled too quickly after the first wave. At the peak, India accounted for almost half of reported global cases and roughly one-quarter of reported deaths in a single week. Reuters documented the overwhelmed hospitals and oxygen shortages.

India officially recorded about 534,000 COVID-19 deaths by 2024. The World Health Organization’s model estimated approximately 4.7 million excess deaths during 2020–2021, including deaths directly and indirectly associated with the pandemic; India rejected that methodology. The difference is too vast to be concealed beneath celebratory language. WHO’s excess-mortality dataset makes the dispute part of the historical record.

The later response was formidable. Oxygen Express trains, military airlifts, conversion of industrial oxygen, imports of cryogenic containers and rapid commissioning of pressure-swing adsorption plants increased supply. Domestic manufacturers delivered vaccines at enormous scale. India eventually administered more than 2.2 billion doses, supported by the CoWIN digital platform. Government data record the scale, although the government’s additional claim that vaccination saved 3.4 million lives rests on modeling rather than direct observation.

The truthful verdict is therefore mixed: India recovered impressively from a catastrophe it initially underestimated. The vaccination campaign was a logistical triumph; the second-wave preparedness failure was not. Simultaneously, China forced a Himalayan reckoning.

The 2020 Ladakh confrontation culminated in the Galwan clash, killing 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese personnel. India deployed tens of thousands of troops, accelerated border infrastructure, restricted Chinese applications and investments, deepened Quad cooperation and entered extended military negotiations.

Disengagement occurred at several friction points, but at the cost of continuing militarization, buffer zones and a fundamentally altered relationship. India prevented further large-scale escalation and refused to normalize political relations while the border remained disturbed. Yet it would be misleading to claim that the pre-2020 status quo was fully restored.

The achievement was deterrence under disadvantage, not an uncomplicated victory.

Domestic dissent further tested the government. The farmers’ agitation lasted more than a year until Modi announced the repeal of three farm laws in November 2021. Reuters called the decision a significant political climbdown. But retreat can itself be a form of democratic crisis management. A government that never reverses course is not necessarily strong; it may merely be incapable of listening.

2022–2024: Surviving a World in Disorder

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presented India with intertwined diplomatic, humanitarian and economic tests. Operation Ganga brought home more than 23,000 people through 90 flights, including 14 Indian Air Force aircraft, after Ukraine closed its airspace. Indian students were moved through Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova. The mission also assisted 147 citizens from 18 other countries. The operation revealed the usefulness of high-level access to Moscow, Kyiv and neighboring capitals.

Strategically, India condemned civilian deaths, called for diplomacy and declined to join Western sanctions against Russia. It increased purchases of discounted Russian crude, containing some of the energy shock while continuing to strengthen ties with the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.

This was not neutrality in the old passive sense. It was transactional multi-alignment: cooperate with Washington in the Quad, purchase energy from Moscow, manage Beijing and speak for the Global South without surrendering policy autonomy.

The approach attracted Western criticism. Nevertheless, India avoided energy scarcity, supplied fuel products to international markets and preserved room for diplomacy. Its consumer inflation averaged above the RBI’s target in 2022, but the country escaped the severe energy crisis that afflicted several import-dependent economies.

India also turned evacuation into a recurring diplomatic instrument. Operation Devi Shakti had evacuated 669 people from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2021. Operation Kaveri later removed 4,097 people — 3,961 Indians and 136 foreign nationals — from Sudan in 2023. Operation Ajay facilitated the return of 1,309 Indians from Israel after the Hamas attacks. MEA’s parliamentary record details these missions.

Operation Dost sent NDRF teams, relief supplies and a self-sustaining 30-bed Army field hospital after the 2023 Türkiye–Syria earthquakes. MEA documentation showed how humanitarian assistance was becoming an element of Indian foreign policy.

At home, the Sikkim glacial-lake outburst flood in October 2023 exposed the accelerating danger of Himalayan warming. Indian Air Force helicopters conducted 287 sorties, transported 205 tonnes and evacuated 3,027 people, including foreign nationals. Weeks later, 41 laborers became trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand. Their rescue after 17 days required engineers, drilling specialists, military transport, “rat-hole” miners and international expertise. The outcome was successful because the authorities abandoned technological vanity and used whatever method worked. That is an underrated quality of resilient leadership: persistence without insisting that only one institution possess the answer.

The period nevertheless contained a grave national failure. Ethnic violence erupted in Manipur in May 2023. By the end of 2024, at least 250 people had been killed and approximately 60,000 displaced. Reuters’ account recorded the scale of the tragedy. Security forces prevented even greater territorial breakdown, but delayed political intervention, segregated communities and unresolved distrust made Manipur an exception to the wider story of competent crisis navigation. No credible assessment should describe it as a triumph.

The Red Sea crisis of 2023–2024 then threatened Indian trade, energy flows and seafarers. Roughly 80 percent of India’s merchandise trade with Europe normally used the Red Sea route. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope increased distance, insurance costs and transit time. India avoided formal participation in a Western military coalition but deployed a substantial independent naval presence. By March 2024, the Navy had responded to 18 incidents, deployed 21 ships and 5,000 personnel, boarded more than 1,000 vessels and rescued the 17-member crew of the hijacked Ruen. Reuters’ report demonstrated how India combined strategic autonomy with provision of maritime security.

Climate calamities kept arriving. Cyclone Remal, Assam’s floods, extreme heat and the Wayanad landslides made 2024 another brutal year. The Wayanad disaster killed hundreds and devastated settlements. Military engineers constructed a 190-foot Bailey bridge in approximately 31 hours; thousands were rescued or relocated.

Yet Wayanad also revealed a recurring national defect: India has become proficient at rescuing people after mountains collapse but remains reluctant to prevent reckless development before they do. Investigations into the disaster linked vulnerability to ecological degradation, obstructed drainage and unchecked tourism. Rescue excellence cannot indefinitely substitute for land-use discipline.

2025–September 7, 2026: War, Tariffs & an Unfinished Test

The Maha Kumbh crowd crush of January 2025 killed at least 30 people officially, although independent reporting indicated a potentially higher toll. More than 76 million pilgrims were present on the most auspicious bathing day. The event proceeded after routes were revised, vehicle movement restricted and VIP privileges curtailed. But a preventable crowd disaster cannot be converted into administrative success merely because an even larger catastrophe was avoided. Reuters reported serious questions over barricading and crowd control.

The Myanmar earthquake in March produced a clearer external-policy success. Under Operation Brahma, India deployed NDRF specialists, engineers, naval vessels and a 200-bed field hospital. By April, the hospital had treated more than 1,600 patients, while hundreds of tonnes of supplies were delivered. The operation strengthened India’s claim to be the natural humanitarian first responder in its neighborhood.

Then, on April 22, terrorists killed 26 civilians, mostly tourists, near Pahalgam. The attack shattered claims of complete normalization in Kashmir. India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, downgraded relations with Pakistan and, on May 7, launched Operation Sindoor against nine locations it described as terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan retaliated. The two nuclear-armed states exchanged missiles, drones and artillery fire before halting military action through direct communication between their directors general of military operations.

Operation Sindoor displayed the maturity — and danger — of India’s evolving coercive doctrine. India combined precision strikes, air defense, diplomatic messaging and a limited declared objective. It established that a mass-casualty terrorist attack could trigger strikes far beyond the Line of Control. But claims by both sides about aircraft losses, casualties and destroyed targets remain contested. Reuters described the confrontation as the most severe clash in more than two decades.

The real achievement was not theatrical domination. It was the ability to impose costs and terminate escalation before a dangerous confrontation became a war.

Operation Sindhu followed during the Iran–Israel conflict. By June 30, 2025, India had brought back 3,597 people from Iran and 818 from Israel, including a small number of foreign nationals. It used embassies, land borders, special flights, military aircraft and 24-hour control rooms. These arrangements later proved valuable when West Asia deteriorated further.

Other events resisted any triumphant interpretation. The June 2025 crash of Air India Flight AI171 in Ahmedabad killed 260 people, including 19 on the ground; one passenger survived. By June 24, authorities had identified 259 victims, mainly through DNA matching. Reuters documented the difficult recovery operation. The government initiated an investigation and regulatory inspections, but the final measure of success will be whether the inquiry remains independent and its lessons are enforced.

The Dharali flash flood, Himalayan cloudbursts and floods in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Manipur, Tripura and Maharashtra again required mass deployment. Official figures state that the armed forces’ major 2025 relief missions rescued 28,293 civilians and provided medical assistance to 7,318. Yet recurring mountain disasters indicate that preparedness is still running behind climate risk.

Economically, the United States’ decision in 2025 to impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on some Indian exports — including an additional penalty connected to purchases of Russian oil — threatened textiles, gems, engineering goods and employment. New Delhi refused to sacrifice agriculture and dairy access merely to secure a hurried agreement. It diversified diplomacy, reopened space with China, intensified engagement with Europe and eventually reached trade understandings with Washington and Brussels in early 2026.

By 2025, India’s GDP had reached approximately $3.96 trillion, compared with roughly $2 trillion in 2014, according to World Bank data. That expansion does not settle questions of job quality, inequality or household income. It does, however, explain why external powers can pressure India but cannot easily dictate its choices.

The gravest 2026 challenge arrived from the expanded war involving Iran and its effects across the Gulf. India faced rising crude prices, disrupted aviation, endangered seafarers, returning workers, pressure on remittances and strain on the rupee. The government had begun warning nationals against non-essential travel to Iran on January 5, before the situation deteriorated. By late March, approximately 500,000 passengers had returned from West Asia through evacuation and commercial-flight arrangements, while more than 938 Indian seafarers had been repatriated. The government’s sectoral update also reported adequate petrol and diesel availability despite logistical stress.

The RBI then deployed an extraordinary balance-of-payments defense. Special channels for non-resident foreign-currency deposits and overseas borrowing attracted more than $136 billion. By August 21, foreign-exchange reserves had reached a record $729.33 billion. RBI data reported by Reuters showed an increase of roughly $63 billion over eight weeks. This was financial resilience with a future cost. The inflows created liabilities, forward exposure and surplus domestic liquidity that the RBI must sterilize. It bought time; it did not make an oil-dependent economy invulnerable.

Still, India’s estimated growth of 7.6 percent in FY2025–26, followed by 7.8 percent year-on-year growth in the first quarter of FY2026–27, demonstrated remarkable momentum amid tariffs and energy disruption. Strong domestic consumption, manufacturing, services, infrastructure spending and increasingly healthy bank balance sheets helped prevent an external shock from becoming a 1991-style payments crisis.

The final emergency before this article’s cutoff date remained unfinished. Catastrophic floods along the Nepal–Tibet border in late August left hundreds of Indian pilgrims and workers missing. By early September, 166 Indians had been rescued, 1,907 had crossed safely into Nepal from China, and India had sent about 95 tonnes of relief supplies along with medical, forensic, engineering and tunnel-rescue specialists. Hundreds remained unaccounted for. The latest available account underscores why success should not be declared while families are still waiting.

The ‘Modi Crisis Doctrine’

Across thirteen years, the government’s approach developed five recognizable characteristics.

First, the Prime Minister’s Office became the command center. Centralization accelerated decisions and gave agencies political authorization to act. It also increased the danger of excessive dependence on a small circle and weakened honest upward communication when early assumptions proved wrong.

Second, India operationalized the whole of the state. The armed forces, NDRF, ministries, railways, airlines, embassies, public-sector enterprises, digital platforms and state governments were increasingly coordinated around mission-specific objectives.

Third, technology became welfare and emergency infrastructure. Aadhaar-linked accounts, digital ration authentication, CoWIN, mobile warnings, satellite imagery and direct transfers allowed a state of continental scale to act with unprecedented reach. Technology did not eliminate exclusion, but it radically expanded administrative bandwidth.

Fourth, strategic autonomy became economic insurance. India bought Russian oil, strengthened the Quad, assisted Palestine, worked with Israel, engaged Iran, negotiated with the United States and concluded a major trade agreement with Europe. This apparent contradiction was deliberate. In a fragmented world, alignment flexibility protected national options.

Fifth, India transformed citizen evacuation into sovereign credibility. From Yemen and Nepal to Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Israel, Iran and the Gulf, the Indian passport increasingly carried an expectation of state assistance. More than logistics was involved. Every successful rescue strengthened the psychological contract between citizen and republic.

Final Thoughts: Resilience Without Mythmaking

India did not emerge unscarred from the furnace of 2014–2026. It emerged larger, more capable, more confident, and more aware of the price of institutional weakness.

The Modi government deserves substantial credit for creating a state that can evacuate millions, feed more than 800 million people, vaccinate a continental population, mobilize military and civilian logistics, resist border coercion, respond across the Indian Ocean and protect economic stability during global disorder.

But resilience is not infallibility. COVID-19’s second wave exposed complacency. The migrant crisis revealed the invisibility of informal labor. Manipur demonstrated the damage caused by delayed political engagement. Wayanad and Dharali showed that heroic rescue cannot compensate forever for ecological irresponsibility. The Kumbh tragedy proved that digital surveillance and artificial intelligence are powerless when elementary crowd discipline fails.

The most enduring Modi-era accomplishment may therefore be neither one military strike nor one evacuation operation. It is the construction of a reusable national capacity to absorb shocks without surrendering strategic direction. Yet the next questions are unavoidable.

Can India move from excellent rescue to intelligent prevention?

Can a centralized crisis state learn to welcome inconvenient information before disaster strikes?

Can strategic autonomy survive deeper dependence on imported energy, components and critical minerals?

Can economic resilience become household security rather than merely impressive GDP growth? And when the next crisis arrives — as it certainly will — will India merely withstand the blow, or possess the wisdom to ensure that fewer citizens must suffer it?

A nation truly triumphs over adversity not when it announces victory after every catastrophe, but when each catastrophe becomes progressively less capable of defeating it.