NEW DELHI — During the months leading up to the spring parliamentary elections, Indians looked at Narendra Modi and saw what they wanted to see.

Right-wing Hindus saw a cultural warrior. Working-class voters saw an incorruptible outsider who would impose discipline, from the “Delhi durbar,” the elite cliques dating to the Mughal courts, down to police constables. Industrialists counted on having an advocate at the top. And public intellectuals in New Delhi, among them centrists who had abandoned the Indian National Congress party, saw an economic reformer who would use his enormous mandate to introduce bold, potentially unpopular policies that would reawaken growth.

Someone was bound to be disappointed.

By the summer, around 70 days after Mr. Modi’s swearing-in, the first chorus of disappointment emerged from advocates of radical change, including some who served as economic advisers during his campaign.

What they had expected was not happening. Mr. Modi’s government introduced its first budget on July 10, to the kind of breathless television coverage typically reserved for royal weddings or moon landings. But it was absent any move that could be described as bold, like lifting caps on foreign direct investment; rolling back the previous government’s subsidy programs; or repealing taxes levied on transactions after the fact, which have long driven away potential investors.