If logic were to dictate, the finance minister would have to be Mumbai's man in parliament. Yashwant Sinha is on a visit to what is the Indian finance minister's most demanding support-system: the country's commercial capital, where trade, industry and finance meet.

Through the day, Sinha, accompanied by his six-feet-four-inches tall lieutenant, advisor Mohan Guruswamy, interacted with the men who he knows must stand up and be counted if India is to grow.

Sinha is not new to crisis. In 1991, despite having drawn up a radical reform programme, he raked up a storm when near national bankruptcy forced him to ship out some of the treasury's gold.

He knows the crisis is not half as real today. Throughout Tuesday, his effort was to show business that the crisis was one of pessimism, of desperate pinning of blame on one another by industry and the government.

Sometimes, he talked tough. "If it comes to trading charges, I can bring up my own: why did industry choose to run up overcapacity, for example."

But the olive branch was there for the industrial world to see. "I will not trade charges. This is the time for partnership, for working together."

Sometimes, Sinha placed his tongue in his cheek. Let us pay taxes and not do anything "inappropriate", he said in a message to taxpayers, and then added in a not-so-quiet aside, "like Bill Clinton," in a reference to a now famous use of the word by the US president in a recent confessional speech to his nation.

But mostly, the perception came through of a man in a hurry to blow away the clouds of despondency. Sinha himself said he has been plaguing those with cleared infrastructure projects with constant haranguing on when their projects are starting: little details, such as when cement or steel purchase would start on these projects, are going to deeply influence the immediate future. Pramod Mittal, the Ispat Industries managing director, actually committed during interaction to a December start-up for his Bhadravati power project.

Sinha chose a cross-section of business to interact with: traders in the morning, industrialists in the afternoon, and capital market intermediaries in the afternoon.

A jam-packed hall at the Oberoi, where the finance minister met CII top honchos, saw the most involved discussion. He took the fight to industrialists, who have criticised him in no uncertain terms of late, and had asked the government repeatedly for steps to bolster the capital market and capital goods markets. He said at the outset that the exchange should be like a parliament session marked by free exchange of suggestions.

He later picked up the gauntlet of industry criticism, and said that we have to ask ourselves why the Feel Good factor is not there.

Earlier, talking about the Asian tigers who have been badly mauled in the recent crises, Sinha said: "We were given the impression that we are an inferior race, but what has happened to the tigers?" Sinha was his usual pugnacious self when it came to rating agencies, attacking their recent downgrading in no uncertain terms.

Sinha has come, and seen. The answer to whether he has conquered his hitherto reluctant support-system is also going to answer the crucial question marks over India's growth.