It is just as well that the new government's budget will be delayed.

It will give Finance Minister Surendra Pandey enough time to digest India's budget presented by Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi this week. Mukherjee showered goodies on India's poor, the farmers, the salaried class and small entrepreneurs.

Like it or not, India is Nepal's largest trading partner by far. It is the destination of last resort for most unemployed Nepalis. India's economic policies cast a long shadow over Nepal's agriculture, industry, trade, taxation and employment. Pandey may have got the country's best brains to advise him, but he has little room to manoeuvre.

In keeping with the tone of the Indian budget, Pandey has no option but to pay more attention to agriculture and jobs. India's heavily subsidised farmers have already made rice, wheat or sugarcane cultivation in Nepal uncompetitive. We can't afford to dole out incentives like the Indians do. So what do we do?

Pandey must follow through with improvements in irrigation and inputs to push higher-value cash crops so our farmers can benefit from the huge and increasingly-affluent market south of the border.

Nepal is reeling under double-digit inflation at a time when India actually recorded deflation this year. The reason this happened despite the open border were highway disruptions, cartelling and weak enforcement in Nepal.With deficit financing proposed in India, prices there will shoot up and this will impact on Nepal. Since Nepal imports almost all consumer goods from India, pumping money into the market has little effect in boosting employment here.

The new government is so ridden with existential angst that it doesn't realise the gravity of our crisis. The macro-economy may be fine, but Nepalis can't eat the macro-economy. This year's food crisis is an emergency. Nothing has been done since the 18-hour power cuts last winter, so next winter is bound to be worse.

Pandey will be tempted to promise the sky. But the delivery capacity of state machinery is so weak that it's best not to be too ambitious. VDCs and DDCs which used to have more accountability have been corrupted by the criminalisation of politics, and there is full-scale loot of the district development budget going on. There is little point pouring money into that leaky budget. Alternative delivery mechanisms have to be found.

What is holding the country back is an absence of political will to lift ourselves up from this morass. We have heard enough speeches, the budget must succeed in giving the message that this government is determined to govern.