Stagnant income has turned mood negative

New Delhi : The Narendra Modi-led government has enjoyed popularity riding on emotional issues, but the mood is fast turning negative with many people finding their income stagnated over the last one year.

Ahead of the Union budget on February 1, an IANS-CVoter poll has shown that the majority of those surveyed have seen their income remain the same while expenses have gone up substantially since 2019.

As a result, the negativity is as deep as it was in the last years of the Manmohan Singh-led government in 2012-13. In the IANS-CVoter survey conducted in the last two weeks of January, 75.8 per cent respondents felt the economic environment in the country was negative.

In 2013, nearly 72 per cent people had considered the growth environment depressed and negative.

As per the survey, the overall scenario has failed to improve much in the last few years of the Modi government, suggesting that the nationalist ideas have ruled the minds of the people.

As much as 28.7 per cent respondents out of a total sample size of 4,292 said that their income went down while expenditure shot up. Nearly 44 per cent people said that their income remained the same while expenditure went up.

A comparison of this year’s poll results with that of the previous year shows that economic situations have deteriorated, thus posing a huge challenge to the Modi government to do course correction.

Only three out of 100 considered that the overall economic environment was positive.

A fifth of the respondents described the overall economic environment as neutral with both income and expenditure increasing. While 11.5 per cent people said that their income and expense both went up, 7.6 per cent said that their earning and spending remained the same.