New Delhi, Dec 6, 2025

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the 23rd edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday, delivered a sharp critique of past governance models and the colonial-era mindset, which he said continued to weigh down India’s progress for several years.

He argued that earlier governments “did not have faith in their own citizens”, pointing to the cumbersome requirement of official attestations for basic documents.

“Our government broke that way of working. A citizen’s self-attested document is enough to prove its authenticity,” PM Modi declared, presenting the reform as emblematic of a larger shift towards trust-based governance.

The Prime Minister also took aim at the historical use of the phrase “Hindu rate of growth”, which was coined in t

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