When it comes to usage of words in Budget speech, terms like growth, investment, youth, infrastructure, jobs and skills topped the charts when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented his maiden Union Budget on Thursday
During his over two-hour-long speech, Jaitley referred to the term ‘growth’ for at least 31 times and to ‘investment’ for another 34 times.
Jaitley’s predecessor P Chidambaram had used ‘growth’ 32 times during his interim budget speech in February this year, but the word ‘investment’ was spoken only 11 times at that time.
Words like skills, FDI, foreign investors, jobs, women, youth and ‘change’ also found a larger number of mentions during Jaitley’s budget presentation, in comparison to then Finance Minister Chidambaram’s Interim Budget speech in February.
However, references to words like ‘poor’, ‘deficit’ and ‘crisis’ came down. Presenting the first budget of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, Jaitley mentioned ‘skills’ and ‘jobs’ for ten times each, while he referred to ‘women’ and ‘investors’ for 11 times each. He spoke ‘deficit’ nine times, while ‘crisis’ and ‘slowdown’ were uttered three times each.