The results have been impressive. Foreign exchange reserves have soared, to $13 billion, from the $1 billion on hand when the Rao Government took office. Foreign capital flows, so far mostly in the form of indirect investments in Indian equities, have followed a similar path, reaching more than $3 billion in the last year, more than all the previous investment since 1947. Exports, too, have jumped, rising by 20 percent in the last year. And inflation has been halved, to about 8.5 percent, from 17 percent in 1991.

BUT for all the progress, the reforms remain embattled, criticized for going too far and for not going far enough.

Many who support the changes instituted so far say the reforms have fallen far short of what will be needed if India is to generate the wealth needed to end the poverty which, by the Finance Ministry's estimates, still traps nearly 40 percent of the population of more than 850 million people. Others, in the left-wing and Hindu nationalist parties that occupy the opposition benches in India's Parliament, accuse the Government of subordinating India's independence and its Hindu traditions to Western capitalist pressures.

Like almost all Indian administrations that preceded it, Mr. Rao's has been accused of widespread corruption. Mr. Singh's strength, apart from his economic expertise, lies partly in the reputation he has built for honesty, which helped him weather a stock-trading scandal that rocked India in 1992. After an official inquiry strongly censured the Finance Ministry for failing to prevent the diversion of $1.5 billion in loans from Government-owned banks into fraudulent stock speculation, Mr. Singh offered his resignation to Mr. Rao, who rejected it. In polls taken by Indian newspapers, Mr. Singh has been rated as the cabinet minister voters trusted most. Among Western diplomats, he has a similar standing. "There is no double-talk with Singh," one ambassador said. "What he says, he believes."

While other members of the Rao Government have hedged their commitment to economic reform, Mr. Singh has been increasingly blunt about the failures of the old system, unafraid to say, in effect, that the country had taken the wrong road for 40 years. "Those of us who were raised in the Anglo-Saxon tradition perhaps were too readily convinced that the state could be a benevolent protector of the public interest," he said to the foreign reporters earlier this year. "But by the late 70's and early 80's it had become quite clear that the whole system had outlived its usefulness."

Such talk has angered those who cling to the old socialist ideals, and added extra zest to the protesters who have singled out Mr. Singh in mass demonstrations against the reforms. During demonstrations in New Delhi last month against the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which India signed in the face of bitter opposition from farmers and others who fear for their livelihoods under the pact, a straw figure with a sky-blue turban, unmistakably an effigy of the Finance Minister, was burned.

Although the Congress Party fared well in state elections last fall, the supporters of the reforms say they fear that the political tides could still move against the reforms. But Mr. Singh said he was confident that the arguments henceforth would focus on the pace of reform, not on the need for the changes.