Sinha is perhaps right to say that ideological resistance to privatisation is not a problem for the BJP as it was for previous -- read Congress -- governments, becauseof their long association with socialist economics. Yet his smugness is thoroughly premature. It was the Congress after all which initiated India's economic liberalisation, albeit not before a balance of payments crisis forced its hand. Absence of ideology, it seems in this case, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of reform: the key words are pragmatism and will. Sinha has himself admitted that privatisation has failed to progress under the BJP so far for obvious reasons. Well, it is obvious that these obvious reasons are not about to disappear in a hurry.

The BJP, with its overall opposition to a more open economy, has also muddied the waters for privatisation. It takes finely nuanced minds to distinguish between one kind of economic reform and another. Such minds seem to be in short supply in the BJP, whose tenor in government has been anti-reformist. The party has already shown its disingenuous professions of ``calibrated liberalisation'' to be bunkum. What it has offered instead is plaineconomic illiberalism. Most crucially, far stronger governments have displayed no appetite for taking on the powerful trade union lobby. Why the BJP would want to do so is not clear to the naked eye. Yet if Sinha can find the resolve, here is wishing him luck. He will certainly need it.