Engaging India is a weekly online column analysing the issues, trends and forces behind the business and politics shaping India and its impact on the world, which appears on FT.com India, a dedicated online section on India. Engaging India appears every Thursday morning exclusively on FT.com India and is written by Jo Johnson, the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau chief; Amy Yee, New Delhi correspondent; and Joe Leahy, Mumbai correspondent.

If there was still anyone expecting reforms from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ‘dream team’ in the latter half of this Congress Party-led government, Wednesday’s budget will have finally disabused them. In a speech that is meant to set the government’s priorities for the year, P. Chidambaram, finance minister, made no commitment to reform labour markets, cut subsidies, privatise state-owned companies or raise FDI caps. The window of opportunity for contentious economic reforms, the key to sustaining the 8-9 per cent growth rates India so badly needs, has now closed.