In an interview to discuss and analyse Sunday’s budget, economist, former Chief Statistician and former Country Head of the International Growth Centre Pronab Sen says the prime minister’s description of the budget as historic is not correct.

Instead, Sen described this as “a business-as-usual” budget which he called “unremarkable”. Asked how well the budget has tackled the problems the economy faces, Sen made clear that it has not done so effectively. He said he couldn’t see “the bada boost” to job creation, which the prime minister identified in his post-budget statement. And Sen thought it was “irresponsible” for the finance minister to have almost forgotten about agriculture in her budget.