Literally speaking: Budget high on farmers, growth, investment

New Delhi, Feb 29: When it comes to the spoken words, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday laid much emphasis on farmers, agriculture, growth, investment and infrastructure in his Budget speech, literally.

'Investment' was among the most-spoken keywords with as many as 37 mentions, although down from 60 in his last year's Budget speech.

Growth was also referred to 20 times, down from 27 last year, while farmers and agriculture found 32 and 24 mentions, respectively.

Jaitley's predecessor P Chidambaram had used 'growth' 32 times during his interim budget speech in February 2014, but the word 'investment' was spoken only 11 times by him.

Besides, Jaitley also talked about rural areas or economy as many as 25 times.

Terming 'ease of doing business' one of the key pillars of the Budget proposals, the Finance Minister used this phrase as many as six times -- albeit again down from 10 last year. Jaitley used the word 'crisis' just once, but referred to 'opportunities' as many as 12 times as he talked about the government's commitment to covert the global crisis into an opportunity for the Indian economy.

The 'common man' however found just one mention, while 'black money' was used twice although he referred to the menace of tax evasion quite a few times.

Other keywords that found quite a few mentions included jobs, skills, youth, corporate and poor.

Jaitley spoke of 'deficit' six times, same as last year, while 'slowdown' was mentioned just once. 'Inflation', which has been a major cause of worry in the past, was mentioned just thrice -- down from eight times last year.

Words like 'inflation', 'deficit' and 'poor' had found repeated mentions in earlier budgets.

Reference to the term 'infrastructure', which has been listed as a key focus area for the government, was made as many as 27 times.

This word was referred to 30 times last year also by Jaitley, while he had mentioned this word 33 times in his July 2014 budget speech as well. Chidambaram had spoken this word eight times in February 2014.

PTI