Archive · 7 Aug 2026
What 99 Budget Speeches Reveal About India's Economic Journey
Economists in India studied almost one hundred very long speeches that leaders give every year about the country's money.
These speeches are called Union Budget speeches, and they explain how the country plans to earn and spend money.
The economists wanted to see how India's ideas about its economy have changed from 1947 to today.
They used computers and smart language programs to study the words and feelings in the speeches.
In the early years, the speeches mostly talked about planning, public investment and saving foreign money because times were tough.
After a big money crisis in 1991, the speeches began talking about opening up trade and letting businesses do more.
In recent years, the speeches focus on building public infrastructure, digital services, manufacturing goods in India, and being accountable.
The tone of the speeches has become steadily more confident over time.
However, the study says Budget speeches do not predict future economic growth.
Instead, they show how leaders diagnosed problems and set goals for the country, recording how India understood development.
A new Economic Advisory Council to the PM (EACPM) study analysed 99 Union Budget speeches delivered between 1947–48 and 2026–27.
The paper, authored by Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Shashidharan Sharma, used NLP and AI-based dictionary analysis combined with official macroeconomic data.
India's Budget narrative has shifted from planning and public investment to public capital expenditure, digital public infrastructure and domestic manufacturing, especially since 2014.
The mean net Budget tone rose from -0.04 during 1950–64 to 0.65 in the post-2014 period.
The authors caution that Budget speeches work as diagnosis, justification and agenda-setting rather than as short-horizon predictors of future growth.
- Who
- Soumya Kanti Ghosh (EACPM part-time member and SBI chief economist) and SBI economist Shashidharan Sharma, authors of the EACPM study.
- What
- A study analysing 99 Union Budget speeches to trace changes in India's economic priorities, tone and development narrative since independence.
- When
- Speeches delivered between 1947–48 and 2026–27; the analysis covers 1950–2026.
- Where
- India.
- Why
- To examine how India's development narrative has evolved over nearly eight decades and how governments diagnosed challenges, justified policy choices and articulated national ambition.
- Study title
- Union Budget Speeches as India's Economic Narrative, 1950–2026: From Planning to Viksit Bharat
- Speeches analysed
- 99 Union Budget speeches
- Period covered
- 1947–48 to 2026–27
- Authors
- Soumya Kanti Ghosh (EACPM part-time member, SBI chief economist) and Shashidharan Sharma (SBI economist)
- Methodology
- Dictionary-based NLP and AI analysis combined with official macroeconomic data and an institutional chronology
- Mean net Budget tone (1950–64)
- -0.04
- Mean net Budget tone (post-2014)
- 0.65
- Key finding
- Each 1-percentage-point increase in inherited real GDP growth is associated with a 0.057-standard-deviation increase in Budget tone