Ready to pay political price for change: Modi

New Delhi, Nov 30: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said he was ready to pay the heavy political cost for his many decisions aimed at changing the socio-economic and political landscape of the country.

'I am well aware that the path I have chosen to take, the place where I have decided to take this country to, will come with a heavy political cost. But I am willing to bear that cost.' Mr Modi said.
Addressing a leadership summit organised by HT Media here, the PM said his government has brought about a massive change in different sectors and its effects were now being reverberated. 
'Tell me, if we had not brought about the changes that we did, would it be possible for the country to grow at the pace at which it is growing right now?' asked PM Modi. 'Change requires decisive actions and that is exactly what we have done,' he said.
"Now, departments are working together. Earlier, corruption was looked at like good manners. People voted for us to permanently fix this failing health of the country," Mr Modi said.
India's development has become the base of New India. People didn't vote in 2014 for a change in government.
“They wanted permanent change in the way we function,” the PM said.
The earlier system was unjust, somewhere, someone always had to fight the system. Railways, Hospitals, Income Tax Refunds, Electricity, and Phone Connection were all a fight for people. Till when will we fight?" the PM questioned.
"Want people to stop fighting the system, and bring about an irreversible positive change in their lives', he said.
The confidence that poor people now have because of initiatives like Jan Dhan is permanent, Mr Modi pointed out, adding that a poor person can now walk proudly into a bank and transact. For an amount far less than what the average person pays for parking, a poor person is able to avail life insurance, he said.
Talking about positive outcomes of demonetization, Mr Modi said not only has demonetisation helped bring money back into the system, it gave us invaluable data on a lot of wrongdoings going on in the country. The data obtained was nothing less than a treasure, he added. 
Before demonetisation, there was a parallel black money economy running in the country, but demonetisation brought all that money into the formal economy, the PM said.
Taking a dig at the media for not spreading the efforts of the government to the masses in a proper way Modi said, “If any other government in the world empowered the poor in its country to this extent, every news channel and newspaper will only be talking about it.”
“But for some reason, the media doesn't seem to be recognising the extent to which poor people have been empowered here,” Mr Modi added.
He said, if any other government had achieved much less, then it would have hailed itself and run a blitzkrieg of advertisements as the 'Messiah of the Poor'.
But, “I make changes not for people to notice, rather because it is my mission," Mr Modi said.
Maintaining that, India has grown in power and commands respect of other nations today, he said, “Not only does India take care of itself and its citizens, it is also the first to provide help to its neighbours like Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal. Even rescue missions conducted in other countries like Yemen have seen people of other nationalities rescued by Indian Navy and safely transported to their own countries.” UNI