India has a great future; old narrative on poverty won't hold: Jaitley

India's market-based economy with social consciousness is more competitive and produces the best talent, says Jaitley

A strong economy can enable a redistribution of its larger resources in order to reduce poverty, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at the Business Standard Awards on Friday.

Honouring the best and the brightest of India Inc and social sectors, Jaitley said in this day and age civil society’s ability to understand what was in its interests was greater than what politicians and the media prescribed.

With less than two weeks to go for the Lok Sabha elections, the finance minister said the “mind space now is elsewhere and not really on the economy”.

With election, the idiom changes, he said. Without directly