Push for inclusive growth | Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma

On May 12, 2026, Himanta Biswa Sarma returned to Dispur with the sort of mandate that removes both rivals and excuses. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 82 of Assam’s 126 seats, crossing the majority mark on its own for the first time, while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) touched 102, with the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) winning 10 seats each. Sarma—now the first non-Congress chief minister of Assam to win a second consecutive term—begins NDA 3.0 as the BJP’s most unchallenged leader in the state.

That is both the opportunity and the trap. Sarma faces no serious political challenge within the BJP. Outside it, the Congress fell to 19 seats, its lowest tally in Assam. The nature of the Congress collapse gives Sarma another weapon. Eighteen of its 19 MLAs are Muslim, a fact that allows the BJP to paint the party not merely as weak but as trapped in minority politics.

But this is where the BJP’s third-term challenge begins. A government with a brute majority and a diminished Opposition can easily become more decisive. It can also become more centralised, more complacent and more impatient with dissent.

THE IMMIGRANT QUESTION

Sarma has shown no sign that he intends to soften his political idiom. His intent to push the BJP’s core agenda was clear from the first cabinet meeting of his second term, where the government decided, among other things, to introduce a Uniform Civil Code Bill in the first session of the state legislative assembly. Hours after being sworn in, he posted a photograph with West Bengal’s new BJP chief minister, Suvendu Adhikari, and wrote: “Bad days for.... (You know who)”. The post was cryptic, but in Assam and Bengal’s political climate, the subtext was read as a warning to illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh remains a legitimate and unresolved concern in Assam. Sarma has repeatedly said he is not against Indian Muslims but against illegal immigrants. In his second term, however, he will have to demonstrate that this distinction is not merely a politically convenient formulation. “Politically, the NDA faces the delicate task of balancing strong central leadership with Assam’s deeply rooted regional aspirations, particularly around identity, immigration and autonomy. Socially, managing ethnic and communal anxieties without sharpening polarisation will remain critical,” says Dilip Gogoi, associate professor and head of the Department of Political Science at Cotton University, Guwahati.

This is where Sarma’s land-reclamation agenda becomes politically significant. His government says it cleared 150,000 bighas of encroached land in the previous term and has now promised to reclaim another 500,000 bighas, placing the exercise firmly within the NDA’s larger ‘Jati, Mati, Bheti’ (identity, land, home) pitch and its promise of defending indigeneity. Administratively, the state government can argue that it is freeing public, forest, grazing and institutional land for conservation, infrastructure and productive use. Politically, the exercise offers visible proof of action against what the BJP portrays as illegal occupation linked to demographic anxieties over Bangladeshi migrants.

GRAPPLING WITH ECONOMIC REALITY

If Sarma’s first term could be presented as a period of political consolidation, administrative speed, welfare expansion and infrastructure push, the second term will be judged by harder outcomes: jobs, incomes, industrial depth, human capital and inclusive growth.

According to RBI data, Assam recorded the fastest economic growth among states between 2021 and 2025 at 45 per cent, far above the national average of 29 per cent. The government says GSDP at current prices is projected at Rs 8.7 lakh crore in FY27, with a growth rate of 16.93 per cent, and that per capita income rose from Rs 86,947 in FY21 to Rs 1.8 lakh in FY26.

But the headline growth rate hides a slower story. Assam is still not among India’s top 15 states by absolute GDP. Its per capita income remains among the bottom 10 in the country. A NITI Aayog macro-fiscal brief records that Assam’s share in India’s nominal GDP fell from 2.6 per cent in 1991 to 1.8 per cent in FY22. Manufacturing’s contribution to State Value Added is 12.5 per cent, below the national figure of 14.8 per cent.

The fiscal architecture looks healthier than the structural economy. Capital expenditure has risen eightfold in a decade to Rs 26,409 crore in FY25. Debt-to-GSDP at 25.52 per cent is the 21st lowest among 28 states. Assam’s own tax revenue has grown 75 per cent in four years to Rs 30,052 crore. But the dependence problem has not disappeared. Transfers from the Centre at 14.2 per cent of GSDP still fund 72 per cent of total revenue.

The harder economic challenge, though, is jobs. Sarma’s first term provided more than 100,000 government jobs through transparent recruitment, a politically valuable achievement in a state where recruitment scams had corroded public trust. But government employment is limited. Sarma has to create conditions for private sector employment, skilled work, services, manufacturing and self-employment to grow at scale. While big industries will create jobs—for instance, the Tata Semiconductor facility in Morigaon district is expected to generate 15,000 direct and 11,000-13,000 indirect jobs—the immediate priority for the government, given the state’s economic context, should be to aggressively promote self-employment.

“While highways, bridges and urban expansion have transformed the state’s visual landscape, the real test lies in creating jobs for educated youth and building an economy that moves beyond construction-driven growth,” says Professor Gogoi. Sarma appears to recognise this: through a series of social media posts before taking oath, he outlined a jobs agenda centred on MSMEs, entrepreneurship and self-employment, promising Rs 5 lakh in entrepreneurship support for 1 million youths and a sharper focus on startups, local economic growth, employment and industrial expansion.

IN SEARCH OF A MODEL

The past five years were the foundation-laying stage of what Sarma calls the Himanta Biswa Sarma model. So far, the model has three visible parts: infrastructure development, welfare expansion and efficient governance. The governance component includes land reforms, faster service delivery, transparent recruitment and a stronger law-and-order image. The agenda for the second term should build on that progress, but the larger objective has to be growth that creates employment. The economic agenda has a national audience, too. Sarma represents Assam, a state with 14 Lok Sabha seats that still trails the national average on most economic indicators.

That is why he needs more than combativeness. Nationally, Sarma is known as much for his sharp, often polarising statements as for his administrative energy. But rabid rhetoric alone cannot build a national claim. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise from Gujarat was never based only on Hindutva. He paired ideological consolidation with a development story that travelled beyond Gujarat. Sarma will have to build an Assam model that is recognisably economic in the same way, and inclusive enough not to collapse under its own communal arithmetic.

The inclusiveness already exists in Sarma’s governance. His welfare schemes have made no distinction between Hindus and Muslims. The challenge, however, for the second term is that the same inclusiveness needs to reflect in his political actions and language, too.