A LESSER man might have quit by now. Even Manmohan Singh's fabled ability to endure humiliation is being tested. That the prime minister defers to his political boss and head of the ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, is widely accepted. That he is undercut by colleagues, including Mrs Gandhi, who are still sceptical about his liberalising reforms, looks increasingly hard for him to swallow. Tougher yet for a man of personal integrity is that he is presiding over such widespread and outrageous corruption. Nor can it be easy for him to accept that, despite an emphatic re-election in 2009, his government has passed no substantial laws.

The price is being paid by India itself. Investors and others lament policy paralysis. Ministers shy away from big decisions, fearing accusations of graft—though Mr Singh this week urged them at least to get on with infrastructure spending. Meanwhile an obstructive opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has caused gridlock in parliament for much of the year, hoping to tap public fury over corruption.

As a result, the current parliament has done the least work of any in a quarter of a century. A prominent Congress figure, Shashi Tharoor, is so glum he suggested this week scrapping parliament altogether in favour of a presidential system. That will not happen, but nor will much get done. On December 13th the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had almost to beg MPs to collaborate on economic reform.

Well he might. An overdue, but poorly sold, official decision to let foreigners invest in (and so improve) the retail sector in India was put on hold just two weeks after it was announced. Mr Mukherjee admitted that the government would have fallen if the matter had gone to a vote. Promoting a reform expressly to reassure investors, then promptly backing away, was dismally bad politics. It may mark the moment this government lost its way.

The weakness looks unforgivable given that Congress holds 207 of the 545 seats in the lower house, or Lok Sabha. On the surface, the blunder was failing to square the retail deal with a coalition ally, the Trinamul Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, a notoriously unreliable ally. She sabotaged Mr Singh's trip to Bangladesh in September over a river-sharing deal; in November she threatened to topple the government over a small petrol-price rise.

But in opposing retail reform she was emboldened by others. Congress leaders opposed the policy in cabinet, which suggests a deeper problem of factions inside the prime minister's party. Mrs Gandhi's dismal silence spoke of her broader detachment, after being diagnosed with a serious illness in the summer. Her son, Rahul Gandhi, a timid would-be prime minister, was as ever absent, pottering around in the politics of Uttar Pradesh. Mr Singh and his coterie were feebly exposed.

Such failures are inviting opponents of other policies to prowl. A plan to let the private sector provide more pensions may be the next victim. A long-touted proposal to confer a “right” to food will be delayed. And on December 13th parliament's finance committee attacked the government's prized scheme for rolling out biometric identity cards, warning it had “no clarity of purpose” and could be a security risk. That looks like an opening salvo for bigger attacks on the scheme next year.

These problems are compounded by slackening economic growth. Local and foreign investors are already unnerved by a global slowdown. Political intransigence, continuing corruption, high inflation and the possibility that India will miss its fiscal targets all add to the government's woes.

Mr Mukherjee has cut his growth forecast for the year, from 9% to 7.5%. Even that may be optimistic, after figures on December 12th showed industrial output (spread across mining, capital goods and other sectors) slumped by 5.1% in October compared with a year earlier. The rupee promptly reached historic lows against the dollar. Inflation fell slightly, to 9.1% in November, but is still much too high. So the central bank will not rush to reverse its long run of rate rises that have left investors squealing.

The response from Mr Singh should be a push to explain to Congress and the country how reforms to land ownership or government efficiency or the retail sector would help to improve the mood and hence India's economic fortunes. Instead he looks set to be embroiled, for the third time this year, in another bitter struggle. A populist anti-graft campaigner, Anna Hazare, is back on the national stage with demands for an ombudsman, a “lokpal”, to oversee politicians, including the prime minister. Mr Hazare is increasingly political and explicitly anti-Congress—he sat with leaders from the opposition BJP and the Communist Party at a one-day fast in Delhi on December 11th and has told voters to boycott the ruling party. That move might limit the numbers who actually rally round him, but it still looks likely to pile more pressure on the ageing Mr Singh.