Millennium Budget

The clearest signal coming from the budget is that political stability is irrelevant when it comes to the pace of economic reforms in India. Why, otherwise, does the budget have the appearance of the same old annual exercise in which finance ministers practise the art of offering minimal policy changes necessary to maintain their image as reformers? Why is there no attempt to use the first budget of the NDA government's five-year mandate as the launch pad for a programme that would take India to its deserved status of a mature economy by the year 2010?