On Wednesday, HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh had some frank words for the Narendra Modi government. He said that nine months after Modi became prime minister, impatience has begun creeping in among businessmen as nothing has changed on ground. He said there was still optimism about changes but this was not translating into revenue for businesses.

The last time such comments were made to a prime minister was in 2011 when a group of industrialists wrote a letter to Manmohan Singh bemoaning the state of India’s economy and the shortcomings of his government. That was the turning point when Indian industry decided to place its faith in a different political party.

Those letters should be seen in context. They were written in 2011, six years after Singh took charge as prime minister. Parekh’s warning to Modi has come much sooner: within nine months of his assuming office. Modi rode on a wave of anger against the shortcomings of the last government. Industrialists and economists felt India had been gripped by a policy paralysis for years that reduced the Indian economy to dire straits. With his huge majority, Modi was expected to quickly change things for the better.

His record, so far, has been mixed.

Some positive steps have certainly been taken. Some labour laws have been changed for the better. But reforms—understood properly as heralding structural changes in various markets and the functioning of the government—have not been undertaken.

The government has been unable to pass key legislation in Parliament. Important Bills on insurance, coal mines, changes in the land acquisition law, have instead been turned into ordinances, creating uncertainty. Some of these ordinances have been issued twice. Even with a strength of 330 members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha, the passage of these Bills into laws is uncertain. The government does not have the required strength in the Rajya Sabha.

So far, there are no signs that this government will call a joint session of Parliament to clear these Bills.

Parekh’s words should serve as a warning. For one, the level of patience with the Modi government was bound to be low: the greater the Parliamentary majority, the shorter the fuse of patience. For another, this government has not outlined its overall economic vision with any clarity. Passage of pending Bills, no doubt a necessary task, is only a small part of solving India’s economic woes. It did not use its first Budget last year to highlight its priorities and instead launched a number of small schemes that were meant to please everyone.

Instead of outlining necessary structural changes, programmes such as Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (clean India campaign) and the Make in India push for industrialization have been launched without careful preparation. While these programmes are important in their own right, they are not the kind of structural changes that will spur growth on a sustainable basis. The danger before the government is that the subdued optimism being seen now will soon turn into open questioning about its understanding on what India needs.

Realistically, this government now has a very small window of at the most 12-18 months in which to carry out some structural changes that India needs. After June 2016, the general election will be on the horizon and any unpopular steps will be out of the question. For that reason, it is very important that Modi gets the Budget right next week.

What business leaders say is often based on narrow interests and is even perceived as self-serving. But the unease behind remarks has a larger circulation. In the nine months since he took over as prime minister, Modi’s government has been seen as enthusiastic but that enthusiasm is not translating into the changes that India needs. It is high time the government got cracking.

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