Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday, June 15, 2026, invoked the everyday experiences of ordinary Indians — from mobile payments to faster travel and online service access — to mark what the ruling BJP is calling #12YearsOfSakshamMiddleClass, a campaign celebrating over a decade of governance reforms aimed at empowering India's middle class.

Context

Rijiju's post frames the transformation of daily life as the defining story of 'New India.' 'Whether paying with a mobile phone, travelling faster, accessing services online or receiving benefits directly,' he wrote, 'millions of citizens are experiencing the impact of a more connected, efficient and inclusive India.' The hashtag #12YearsOfSakshamMiddleClass signals a coordinated BJP communication effort marking roughly twelve years since the party's governance agenda began taking shape at the national level.

The minister's message cuts across multiple policy domains — digital payments, infrastructure, e-governance, and direct welfare delivery — presenting them as a unified arc of middle-class uplift rather than isolated programmes.

Policy Backdrop

The pillars Rijiju references have deep institutional roots. The Digital India programme, launched in July 2015, set out to expand broadband connectivity, digitise public services, and promote electronic delivery of government benefits. It underpins the shift to online service access the minister describes.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), rolled out in 2016, has since become one of the world's largest real-time payments platforms, enabling the mobile-phone transactions Rijiju highlights. Simultaneously, the expansion of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) — scaled aggressively from 2014 onward — moved subsidies and welfare payments directly into beneficiaries' bank accounts, cutting intermediaries and reducing leakage. Together, these three pillars — Digital India, UPI, and DBT — form the backbone of the governance reform narrative the BJP has consistently promoted.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary audience of this messaging is India's expanding middle class, a demographic that has grown substantially over the past decade and that both uses and benefits from digital public infrastructure. For this segment, UPI-based payments, online government portals, and faster rail or road connectivity represent tangible quality-of-life improvements that translate into political salience.

Welfare beneficiaries at the lower end of the income spectrum are equally implicated: DBT has channelled subsidies for cooking gas, food, fertiliser, and scholarships directly to bank accounts, reducing dependence on intermediaries. The convergence of these experiences — from urban professionals paying via mobile to rural households receiving benefits digitally — is precisely the 'inclusive India' framing Rijiju deploys.

What's Next

Parliamentary debates on the next phase of Digital India and fresh budget allocations for digital infrastructure and DBT expansion are expected to be closely watched in the coming legislative sessions. The #12YearsOfSakshamMiddleClass campaign is likely to intensify as the BJP seeks to consolidate its governance record as a political asset heading into the 2024-2029 policy cycle. How the government translates this messaging into concrete new announcements — whether on infrastructure spending, digital public goods, or welfare scheme expansion — will determine whether the campaign moves beyond communication into policy action.