Narendra Modi’s First 100 Days as Prime Minister in 2014: Early Priorities and Actions

The first 100 days of any new government tend to signal its real priorities, before the routine business of governing sets in. This article covers what Modi’s government specifically did in that window after his May 2014 swearing-in, with the concrete programmes launched and decisions made.

An Early Foreign Policy Signal

Modi’s first notable act as Prime Minister-elect came before he was even sworn in: he invited the heads of government of all SAARC nations, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to attend his swearing-in ceremony on May 26, 2014, an unusual diplomatic gesture that was widely read at the time as an early signal of his approach to regional diplomacy, prioritising personal engagement with neighbouring leaders from the very start of his tenure.

Financial Inclusion: Jan Dhan Yojana

One of the government’s most significant early initiatives was the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial inclusion scheme launched in August 2014 aimed at giving every Indian household access to a bank account. The scheme opened bank accounts at a scale rarely attempted anywhere in the world, with Wikipedia’s entry on the scheme citing more than 180 million new accounts opened within its first year, laying groundwork that later fed into the broader “JAM trinity” approach, linking Jan Dhan bank accounts, Aadhaar identity numbers, and mobile phones, that became a recurring feature of how the government delivered welfare payments directly to citizens in subsequent years.

Public Sanitation: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

The government’s other major early flagship programme, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission, was formally launched on October 2, 2014, deliberately timed to coincide with Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. The campaign combined infrastructure spending on household and public toilets with a public messaging push aimed at changing sanitation habits nationally, and Modi personally took part in the launch by symbolically sweeping a street, a visual moment that was widely covered and became closely associated with the campaign’s public identity in its early months.

Reviewing the Bureaucracy

Beyond these headline schemes, the early administration also focused on internal government efficiency, with reports describing an unusually direct, hands-on approach from Modi in reviewing ministries and government projects in his first weeks, including reportedly pushing for faster clearance of stalled infrastructure projects that had been held up in bureaucratic processes for years, a working style that observers linked directly to the administrative habits built during his years as Gujarat Chief Minister. Government officials cited in early coverage of this period described unusually direct instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office asking individual ministries to report concrete progress within weeks rather than the more traditional quarterly review cycles many departments had previously used, a change in pace that several senior bureaucrats reportedly found jarring after the slower rhythm of the outgoing administration.

Early Economic Signals

The government also moved relatively quickly on some economic administration matters in this window, including steps toward simplifying business regulations and an early emphasis on the “Make in India” concept, formally launched slightly after the 100-day mark in September 2014 but developed and signalled as a priority during those first months in office, aimed at encouraging domestic and foreign manufacturing investment in India.

Why the First 100 Days Framing Matters

Judging any government purely by its first 100 days has real limits, since major policy outcomes, particularly for large-scale schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana and Swachh Bharat, only become measurable years later rather than in the initial rollout window. What the first 100 days do reliably show is where a new government chooses to spend its earliest political capital, and in Modi’s case, that fell heavily on financial inclusion, public sanitation, and a personally hands-on approach to bureaucratic efficiency.

How Commentators Judged the Early Record

At the time, coverage assessing the first 100 days was notably mixed rather than uniformly positive or negative. One roundup published around the milestone, looking across a dozen different policy areas, described a government that had moved quickly and visibly on a handful of flagship announcements while leaving many of its other campaign promises still at an early, unimplemented stage, a fairly typical pattern for any incoming government’s earliest months, when launching new programmes is considerably easier than completing them.

Setting a Template for Future Milestones

The 100-day framing itself became something of a recurring device in how Modi’s government has been covered and, at times, has framed its own progress, with subsequent milestones, including 100-day retrospectives after both the 2019 and 2024 re-elections, continuing to be used by media outlets as a checkpoint for assessing each new term’s early priorities against its predecessor’s, giving the initial 2014 100-day period a lasting role as the benchmark against which the two later terms have consistently been measured.

Bottom Line

Modi’s first 100 days in office were defined less by dramatic single announcements than by the launch of two large, long-horizon programmes, Jan Dhan Yojana and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, alongside an early diplomatic gesture toward SAARC neighbours and a hands-on push on internal government efficiency, setting a governing style that carried through the remainder of his first term.

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Abhyudaya Verma