New Delhi, Oct. 8 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped into his 25th year of public office on Tuesday with a message on social media, recalling the October morning in 2001 when he took the oath as Gujarat's chief minister for the first time.

"On this day in 2001, I took oath as Gujarat's Chief Minister for the first time," he wrote on social media. "Thanks to the continuous blessings of my fellow Indians, I am entering my 25th year of serving as the head of a government."

That oath had been taken in Gandhinagar, inside the austere hall of the Raj Bhavan. Outside, the state was still marked by ruins from the Bhuj earthquake that had struck nine months earlier, leaving entire neighbourhoods flattened and livelihoods erased. Political u...