On Thursday, Narendra Modi held a meeting with some well-regarded economists at Niti Aayog in New Delhi. This comes ahead of the presentation of the Union Budget in the Parliament. The government wants to come up with an intelligent budget that can revive the economy.

Also present in the meeting were Home Minister Amit Shah and his colleagues Piyush Goyal and Nitin Gadkari.

Surprisingly, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was not present at the meeting. Since it's she who will be presenting the budget, her presence would have made a lot of difference.

Meanwhile, Modi and Shah are believed to be working on the feedback given by about a dozen groups of industrialists whom they have interacted with in recent days.