Battle of Hashtags: Here’s How Twitter Reacted to the Budget

From positive to negative hashtags, Budget 2019 dominated Twitter chatter all day

Budget 2019 ruled Twitter on 1 February 2019.

(Photo: Shruti Mathur/ The Quint)

Budget 2019 kept the whole nation on it’s toes with many eagerly waiting for it. The Interim Budget was presented by Piyush Goyal on 1 February 2019. He was filling in as officiating Finance Minister in place of Arun Jaitley.

Budgets always send the nation in a frenzy. There is equal opportunity to love, hate, argue and calculate.

But this Budget is grabbing more eye-balls because it is the last Budget before the Lok Sabha Elections that are likely to be announced in early March. 

Budget 2019 also sent social media, especially Twitter into a meltdown and it seemed like there was nothing else Twitterati wanted to talk about.

Budget 2019 ruled all trends on Twitter throughout the day.(Photo: Twitter screenshot)

All the top trending hashtags on Twitter were around the Budget of 2019. Some of them were #Budget2019, #BudgetForNewIndia, #AakhriJumlaBudget, Middle Class etc.

The term ‘Rs. 17’ started trending after Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted about how the money announced for farmers who own less than two hectares of land will actually only receive Rs. 17 per day.

#AakhriJumlaBudget: Opposition Calls Out Unfulfilled Promises

Congress President Rahul Gandhi along with multiple wings of the opposition called out the alleged false promises of the ruling government.

The #AakhriJumlaBudget was trending throughout the day as well. The hashtag seemed like it was taking a dig at how it might be the last budget that Modi government is presenting. It was also a dig at PM Modi and his alleged reputation of coming up with jargons to promote schemes.

The Congress also graphically drew out the difference in the growth in Congress vs BJP era.

It seemed like the Congress tried to do some fact-checking as well.

The hashtag was later picked up by general public as well and by the end of the day, only one negative hashtag trended about the Budget.

‘Rs.17’ also trended after some mathematics showed that this is what farmers will be getting as support. The BJP was quick to retaliate with saying that the farmers were to receive Rs 6000 as support. Rs. 6000 started to trend soon after. Even though the maths remained the same.

#BudgetForNewIndia: BJP Supporters Hail Budget

Apart from the general Budget hashtags like #Budget2019 that was being tweeted, many users also expressed their optimism by tweeting the hashtag #BudgetForNewIndia.

Many of the tweets under this came from the BJP or BJP-affiliated handles.

The BJP looked like it was trying to save face after the unemployment data debacle was made public on 31 January 2019.

Some of the most fierce tweets with this hashtag came from BJP leaders like Smriti Irani.

The term ‘middle class’ also trended as people tried to figure out if it was a Budget for the middle class of whether this section had been taken for a ride.

Predictably, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal’s name also trended not just when he was delivering his Budget speech but also later in the day as he gave one interview after another.