Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today began her presentation of the union budget by reciting a few lines of an Urdu poem written by the late Manzoor Hashmi. The budget, the first of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second term, has set an ambitious target for the government - to make the Indian economy a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25. "yakeen ho to koi raasta nikalta hai, hawa ki ot bhi le kar charagh jalta hai (if there is belief then a road ahead will open up, sheltered from the winds the lamp will burn brightly)," the finance minister said before reading out the speech.
