Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the Union budget had “nothing” on job creation and insisted that the recent pro-Jallikattu protest at the Marina beach here had more to do with the concern for employment and overall “angst” against issues including “intolerance.” Analysing the budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday, Chidambaram said while the “cry” everywhere was about jobs, the annual exercise did “nothing” to address the concerns of young people and their parents.
“If you think that the thousands of men and women who gathered at the Marina had come to protest the ban on jallikattu, you are only looking at the surface. Deep down there is angst, there is anger, there is anxiety about the future,” he said at the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) here. “There is concern about divisiveness, there is concern about polarisation, there is concern about religious conflict, there is concern about intolerance– you can eat this, you can’t eat that, you can wear this you can’t wear that, you can love somebody, you cannot love somebody, you can marry somebody, you cannot marry somebody. “Ban books, ban authors, ban beef, ban jazz, ban jeans. Young people are very concerned about these issues. Among the most important concern is jobs. Where are the jobs?” he said.