Sitting in the study of the prime ministerial bungalow in New Delhi, surrounded by manicured lawns and palm trees, Indian leader Manmohan Singh and his soon-to-be finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram pored over plans late into the evening to stem a growing sense of crisis.

Singh, the 80-year-old soft-spoken architect of the country’s economic opening two decades earlier, and Chidambaram, the 67-year-old Harvard University-educated lawyer who enjoyed the trust of ruling party chief Sonia Gandhi, saw the window closing to reverse a growth slump, according to people briefed on the talks. Their recipe: a combination of spending cuts and foreign-investment liberalization that amounts to the biggest policy overhaul in a decade.

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