Budget: 'Individuals' vent ire on social media

Mumbai, Mar 3: 'Individuals' gave thumbs down to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's maiden full-year Budget for its absence of tax incentives, ratings agency Crisil's social media analysis said today.

"Individuals were the most negative on the Budget, lamenting failure to meet expectations on tax benefits even as he increased service tax rates," Crisil said in findings of a post-Budget social media analysis.

The 'individuals' category was closely followed by the category of 'distinguished citizens' with 34.7 per cent expressing dissent against the Budget and the 'inlfuencers' stood at 32.3 per cent.

Interestingly, political and social activists at 30.2 per cent were trailing the above three categories when it comes to voicing critical views about the Budget, the survey showed.

Crisil analysed over 37,000 users from categories that also included economic experts, media and businesses, and 1.89 lakh comments or mentions on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs for 12 hours after the presentation of the Budget.

On the overall social media sentiment, Crisil said 63.6 per cent of the people analysed are positive on the Budget and the top trends are impact on the middle class and taxes, education, infrastructure and black money.

The `individuals' was the most active category representing 76.7 percent of the profile population and 67.1 percent of the total mentions.

Those in 13-20 age-group spoke mostly on jobs, income and insurance, while corporates, black money, wealth tax, growth, investment, infrastructure and gold were key issues for 21-30-year-olds, and those over 40 spoke on insurance and mediclaim premia, middle-class, pension and social security, in addition to growth.

PTI