At the end of the day, it is the national interest which is paramount,, Minister of Railways & Coal,tellsof, at the India Economic Conclave on Thursday.Edited excerpts:Dr Arvind Subramanian is a very learned man and has a very good sense of understanding about long-term economic policy. He gave us very good advice over the last three and a half years that he was with us. There can be no doubt at all that a nation is defined by the institutions that they create and I must say the founding fathers of India and in some sense of these institutions even precede our independence, have focussed a lot on integrity of institutions, have focussed a lot on integrity of individuals who head the institutions, they focus a lot about responsibility and accountability. One cannot hope to have power without being responsible to use that power properly and being accountable to the people of India.Therefore, while institutions will and always remain important for strengthening India’s economic progress and a better future for the people of India, one must certainly also keep in mind that all of us are individuals, all of us in our respective positions have goals and agendas, but at the end of the day, it is the public interest, the national interest which will be paramount.Since you started your comments by talking about your desire that this current little setback on the three states hopefully will not derail our huge thrust on reforms, our huge thrust to transform the mindset of the nation, I would like share with your esteemed audience a particular dialogue that honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in a recent cabinet meeting had given to us. We were taking a very major policy decision which was not a very convenient decision politically. It was certainly not a decision a government getting into election mode would have ever taken.Well we have taken a lot of very bold decisions. We are certainly not a government that fights shy of taking inconvenient decisions but in national interest and public interest. I remember several members of the Cabinet in the meeting were trying to suggest that we can jolly well do this a little later, there is no need to do it right now and then and maybe it should be deferred.The Prime Minister had only two questions for all of us in his cabinet: is the decision good for the people of India? Is the decision in national interest? And if it ticks on both these counts, then now is the time to do it irrespective of political considerations, irrespective of the timing being linked to a election and our job as his colleagues in the government is to take that message to the people of India and explain that to the people of India.I can list out countless examples including demonetisation. At that point of time in November, most people felt that there is an election in March and we would be wiped out in that election given the inconvenience some people had to face and which was blown somewhat out of proportion at that point of time. But he had the courage of conviction that he is doing it for the good of India, he is preparing a nation to accept that the long-term honesty is going to have a premium. We will be a nation free of corruption, we will have a nation which pays its taxes honestly and the people of India gave him complete support because they trust that he is that one leader who can change the destiny of India.By the way, there is a lot of criticism that I read in The Times of India about me and the work that I do. But I think you strengthen me by your criticism and I would like to share an example with your group here. I was the Union Power Minister and I was handling the programme which honourable prime minister had announced from the Red Fort that within a 1,000 days we will make sure that electricity reaches every village in the country and those villages which were left were the remotest and the most difficult to reach out to. Of course, that was to a design that we reach it to every village and then to every hamlet around the villages. That is the only way we can reach it to every individual and every home in the country.After all, we cannot have a nation that 70 years after independence still has millions of people starved of electricity or deprived of basic amenity. While I was doing the electrification of villages, there was a front page headlined article in The Times of India criticised me. There were three villages in Rajasthan which are on my mobile app. All my work is given out on mobile apps through at the highest degree of transparency that has been the credo of this government. On my mobile app it was showing that we have electrified these three villages.Now obviously, the central government takes data from the state, puts it on to the app and that is how it was showing. When I first read it, my initial reaction was what the hell, my officers have made a mistake. These villages could not have got electricity because your article had said that these villages do not exist at all. Now as a person born and brought up in Mumbai, I could never for the life of we imagine a situation where there are revenue villages which do not exist at all. So I immediately dispatched officers to visit these three villages. I actually found that because the water table in these villages had gone too low, the people had migrated and there was nobody living in those villages. Therefore, those villages were actually non-existent. Thanks to your article, it was an eye opener for me. I have publically facilitated The Times of India and acknowledged the contribution of Times for highlighting a subject that I was not aware of.After that criticism, I was able to find 950 such villages across the country which on revenue record are shown as unelectrified villages. If your article had not come, I would actually have been funding the electrification of those villages and in the good old days this was a regular practice. Where that money went God knows! We were able to save that money for the people of India. Therefore criticism and some sort of disagreement is always good.Exactly and if anybody thinks that he is perfect, then he is living in a fool’s paradise.I can respond to each one of them. I do not know what is the time limit but I can respond to each one of them and show you how hollow the criticism is….Let us first talk about Planning Commission. Now the Planning Commission of India was the one which took out the numbers which showed that India will need X amount of power in a few years from the time that they came out with that report and on the basis of that thousands and thousands of megawatts of power plants were set up across the country.It was the same planning commission, I am using an example from a ministry that I run, which said that India can never increase it coal production and therefore all these plants should be built based on imported coal which will continue to be imported not for one year, two year but for 25 years after that…