INDIA?S ruling coalition set about selling its vote-catching pre-election budget yesterday, as the election commission discussed the dates of an early poll. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh?s interim budget on Tuesday has been generally welcomed by commentators for its political shrewdness and fiscal gains, although many point out those gains stem more from a booming economy than structural reform.

?Everything I do, I do it for you?, said the front page headline in The Times of India, above a cartoon of Singh dressed as singer Bryan Adams.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are campaigning heavily on economic management in their bid for re-election, which opinion polls show they will win.

Parliament is due to be dissolved this week and election commission officials were to met yesterday to discuss dates for voting, likely to be staggered over several days in April and possibly into May. A decision is expected within a week. The budget, offering crucial rural and middle class voters a range of modest giveaways with the promise of more to come if the BJP-led coalition is returned, comes on top of billions of dollars worth of other popular measures, including indirect tax cuts.

The budget includes money for new hospitals, a programme to tackle chronic clean water shortages in the cities and subsidies for food grains for poor rural families. It also promises help for agricultural industries, such as tea and sugar, and more spending and cheap credit for the farm sector ? which supports about 70 per cent of India?s one billion people and accounts for 25 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Buoyed by bumper crops after the best monsoon in a decade and booming consumer spending, Singh ramped up his growth forecast for the year to March to 7.5-8.0 per cent from more than seven, and said he expected eight percent again in 2004/05.