Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said higher growth and a vibrant civil society are necessary to alleviate poverty. “How do you fight povertyIJ I think the first element you have to fight poverty is that the society must have resources to fight it,” he said, speaking at the annual Jamnalal Bajaj Awards here.
“You need a high level of growth. Growth brings in resources. The policy of the state which brings a high level of growth is absolutely necessary. But will that growth itself remove povertyIJ The answer is no,” he said. He said the economic growth will only bring in the resources which are needed for the aim of poverty alleviation. “You require social activism of the civil society to continue to flag the plight of the poor, to continue to work in those areas, to knock at policymakers and bring the poor onto the forefront and then after years and decades, we are able to pull them from their present condition of destitution,” he said.
The Minister, who presented awards to civil society groups for their work on diverse areas like healthcare and street children, exhorted everybody to resolve to work in this direction and make the country a better place to live. Pointing to Jamnalal Bajaj's work of aligning with the Freedom Movement, he posed a question whether such posturing is possible for an industrialist in the contemporary times sans the raising of eyebrows.