Sinha, who is on a visit to the city, also explicitly held business responsible for the country's future. He said that growth will have to strike a partnership between business and government. Pinning blame on each other, he said, will have to stop here and now.

Sinha also spelt out his vision for the need of an alternative economic model. "We are too large a country to follow other models; we can at best learn from other models. We must be able to things at our own pace, our own way," he said. The country's perceived shortcoming -- the slowness of reform -- is suddenly being seen as our strength, he said.

Sinha met a cross-section of business on Wednesday: the trade lobby (through the FIEO) in the morning, industrialists (through the CII) in the afternoon and the capital market representatives in the evening. The meetings will continue on Thursday.

Projecting a minimum 4 per cent agricultural growth in 1998-99, Sinha said consequent rural demand will shore up industry. "I will peg expenditure at target level, and only extra spending will be non-plan and related to exigencies such as floods," he said. Speaking to the FIEO, Sinha expressed concern over the widening current account deficit, which, if continues, will make his task as finance minister difficult.

Disinvestment will be large-scale and quick, he disclosed, with the first experiment scheduled for the end of the month. He hinted at the use of the option of a special purpose vehicle, saying that major `innovations' were proposed. He also said that there will be no question of waiting for market upswings to sell PSU shares, and that new shareholders will gain from future appreciation. The disinvestment list will be expanded soon, he said.

There were glimpses of indirect tax rationalisation in the next budget. Sinha said he will whittle down excise rates to just three layers, and remove customs duty anomalies. The CII had been requested to arrive at intra-sector consensus on duty rearrangements, but if it failed to arrive at such industrywide agreements, the government will go ahead with rationalisation.

The department of revenue has been asked to identify import duty anomalies where customs on raw materials were higher than that on intermediate and finished products.

Steel, cement, commercial vehicles, paper, capital goods and textiles have been identified as the key problem sectors, and packages were under preparation, Sinha said, adding although these will not necessarily be tax sops.

Agreeing with industrialists that a crucial juncture had arrived with the south-east Asian economic disaster and the more recent Russian chaos, Sinha said the government will seek to capitalise on the fact that the West has surplus investible resources. The government will work towards making India the most preferred investment destination in the next millenium, he said.

Sinha absolved the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) of blame in the Tata group's recent withdrawal from the airline project, saying this was a question that required study of opinions of a large section of parliament and other groups. Sinha said he hoped that the Tatas will reconsider the project.

Throughout the day, Sinha listened to the demands of traders, industrialists and capital market intermediaries, taking down notes that he said will be policy inputs.

"If it comes to blaming each other, I can also raise charges," Sinha said to a gathering of the CII glitteratti, "for instance, why did industry go for overcapacity at all? But the time is not for exchanging counter-blames, all parties are at fault. We have to find out why the feel good factor is not there. We will meet the challenge if we face it together: this is as much your responsibility as it is mine."

Sinha repeated his earlier criticism of rating agencies. "A country which has been built brick-by-brick always stands strong, compared with those who grow very fast without foundation," he said. He pointed out that neither had India ever defaulted on international commitments, nor had any foreign institution been told not to repatriate for dearth of foreign exchange reserves: yet the rating agencies had chosen to downgrade, turning Indian bonds into junk bonds."