Sinha has set a bold fiscal deficit target of four per cent, which he hopes to achieve by downsizing government expenditure. He intends to reach this target by raising Rs10,000 crore by hawking PSU shares, by cutting expenditure, downsizing government and, through a neat piece of financial engineering, keeping roughly Rs 25,000 crore of small saving accruals out of the balance sheet.

For tax incentives, the finance minister's chosen few are mutual funds aimed at salvaging UTI's US-64, the stock market, the housing sector and the corporate sector specifically for business reorganisation. The widely expected sops for cement, steel and automobiles did not materialise.Instead, he gave a further push to the high growth high-tech knowledge-based industries like pharmaceuticals and information technology. For the pharmaceutical sector he has made foreign direct investment coupled with incentives for research and development.

A special feature of the budget has been the gold bond scheme aimed at bringing down the burgeoning gold import.The minister signalled a new phase of agriculture and social sector reforms, significantly aimed at transfering power to the common people inrural India. Elected village bodies would now decide how to implement plans and programmes -- from employment generation to primary health care and education -- worth thousands of crores which were earlier merely imposed on them.

Clearly, Saturday's budget did send the right signals. But a cross section of industry remained sceptical about how exactly Sinha would manage to keep within the bold targets he set for himself. They said that biggest inconsistency in the budget was his unwillingness to get into specifics on divestment targets, downsizing and expenditure cuts. The fine print was missing and that could spell trouble in the months ahead.