Monsoon's late show casts a dark cloud

But for Mumbai's businessmen, the delay means more than just another week escaping hundred-degree humidity in air-conditioned rooms.

For all its IT parks, billionaires, and clever feats of low-cost engineering, India's economy is still agricultural.

Citigroup's chief India economist Rohini Malkani estimates that a bad monsoon (and if rains don't come this week, that's what it looks like) would cost the country about one percentage point of gross domestic product growth.

Although agriculture only accounts for 17% of Indian GDP, more than half of Indians live off the land.

Their spending power, propped up by two years of bumper crops and a government scheme to write off $15billion of farmers' debts, took the edge off the economic downturn last year.

Companies such as Tata Motors, Hindustan Motors and Vodafone saw sales hold up remarkably well in rural areas.

Some 60% of India's farmland depends solely on the monsoon rains and, according to Malkani, water levels in India's 81 major reservoirs have fallen to just 10% of capacity.

If the rains don't pick up this week, India's agricultural production could fall from its 3% annual growth trend to close to zero.

So the south-westerly winds buffeting the city on Monday will have come as a relief to economists and equity strategists as well as normal citizens, although they're much less likely to start dancing in the streets when the heavens finally open.

Vijay Mallya, India's self-styled "King of Good Times", is presently having a very bad time indeed: his cricket team, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, reached the final of the Indian Premier League and then lost; his Formula 1 team, Team India, may end up alone on the grid with Williams as the other eight teams spurn Max Mosley; and all the while his loss-making Kingfisher Airlines is veering ever closer to going bust.

The Airports Authority of India has revealed that from next week it will cut off all credit to the airline after its unpaid bills mounted too high, something jet fuel suppliers already did a few months back.

The airline recently took out a $500 million loan, which should keep it going for a year. But the long-term survival of the flamboyant tycoon is looking less and less certain.