So the interim budget has come and gone, leaving many shaking their heads in disagreement, and disappointment. The budget has the unmistakable touch of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, even though he is away convalescing from a heart bypass. His hand in the budget is seen not in its economic content but in its propriety in not exceeding a government’s constitutional or conventional role ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

For the most part of his nearly five-year stint as prime minister, Singh has played it clean, hoping to win over middle-class voters who see in him a truly honest political leader who can be trusted. The Congress Party must be hoping his last shot will somehow pay off because there is nothing in the budget to remotely calm middle class concerns. So much so, a middle-class backlash in the elections might not be unimaginable.

Many who believed the dire economic situation would persuade the Congress to break with tradition and do far more with the interim budget have been crestfallen. They lament, accurately, that India will be left without any policy initiatives to battle the economy for the next four months or so. Should there be more negative news from around the world, as seems always likely, India would be left watching. Even as I write this, the Dow Jones is slumping and threatening to test 52-week lows. Should this spiral downward, global markets could take a dive.

However, critics overlook a key point: Could the finance minister have really done anything?

India’s fiscal deficit is alarmingly high – could be up to 6% of GDP, and upwards of 10% counting the states’ deficits. Even though fiscal deficit is the last thing on the minds of finance ministers around the world, the UPA could have come up with something exceptional only if it could build a consensus with the help of the opposition. This task was never attempted, or at any rate, never noticed by anybody. In this, both the Congress as well as the BJP might be to blame. If the country’s two major parties cannot come together in exceptional situations, when will they?

So here we are looking forward only to the elections. The BJP lost the last Lok Sabha poll with its India Shining slogan, ignoring the rural classes. The Congress could be in danger of doing the opposite: winning the rural voters with its large spending plans, but ignoring a beleaguered middle class reeling from a global economic meltdown. Whichever coalition comes to power, one thing is clear: it will have to battle the economy on a war footing.