Growth, investment dominates Jaitley's budget speech

During his over two-hour-long speech, he referred to the term 'growth' for at least 31 times and to 'investment' for 34 times

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 today.

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.

'Inflation', which has been a major cause of worry for the new government ever since it came to power, was referred to six times by the new Finance Minister.

Words like inflation, deficit, investment, jobs and poor had found several mentions in last year's budget speech, presented by P Chidambaram in February 2013.

At that time, Chidambaram had mentioned the word 'women' as many as 24 times -- most of which were during his proposal for setting up a 'Women's Bank'. During his interim budget earlier this year, the count of 'women' fell to five, while it again rose to 11 in today's budget speech.

The reference to term 'infrastructure', which has been listed as a key focus area for the new government, was made as many as 33 times by Jaitley in his speech, as against just eight times in February.