Quality of debate on economic issues has suffered, says Arun Jaitley at Moneycontrol Wealth Creator Awards

The quality of debate in India has suffered, particularly on economic issues. “Debates should be based on facts and analysis, informed by data,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday, underlining the need for policy debates based on hard facts and data crunching. Addressing the inaugural edition of the Moneycontrol Wealth Creator Awards through a video link, Jaitley said, “digital platforms like Moneycontrol are serving a great national purpose by making debate, discussion and policy formulation, meaningful,” he said. Moneycontrol hosted the first edition of the ‘Wealth Creator Awards’ on Friday in Mumbai. Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Civil Aviation was the chief guest. [caption id=“attachment_4280363” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. PTI[/caption] The remarks come two days ahead of the crucial central board meeting of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), amid a public spat between central bank and government on certain policies. Admitting that the country has suffered due to the poor quality of debates, Jaitley said: “it has to be a national endeavour to improve the quality of debates, particularly in economic areas.” He also said wealth creation is a “challenge” in these times as also in the future. He regretted that there was a time when we were focused only on slogans and pitched for the alternative of increasing productivity instead. The focus on increasing productivity can lead to “equity and a more prosperous environment”. “The future is not going to be the redistribution of poverty, but the distribution of wealth, which, of course, is determined by who is able to generate wealth itself,” he said. The Wealth Creator Awards recognised the top wealth creators from across India’s financial-services industry – banks, broking firms, asset management and insurance companies besides individuals and fund schemes. Winners of Wealth Creator Awards Following were the winners and the categories they won: Ramesh Sobti, CEO and MD, IndusInd Bank, won the award for the ‘Best Financial Services Personality of the Year’. Bandhan Bank  was declared Best Bank, Motilal Oswal Best Broking Business, HDFC Standard Life Insurance most promising debut in the Big League, Bajaj Finance as ‘NBFC Wealth Creator’, ICICI Pru Life Insurance Life Insurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance as General Insurance and Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC as the Best AMC’. Harshvardhan Lunia, Co-Founder of LendingKart, won the award for the ‘Fintech Personality of the Year’, while Anurag Agrawal won the ‘Social Impact Creator of the Year’ award. In fund schemes, Axis Bluechip was named the ‘Large Cap Fund of the Year’ while L&T Midcap was adjudged the ‘Mid Cap Fund of the Year’. (Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd., is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd which publishes Firstpost and Moneycontrol.)