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Mass protests by sugarcane farmers backed by political opposition parties forced the parliament to adjourn for a second day on Friday, a major headache for the ruling Congress party.

The standoff over price deregulation highlights the difficulty Congress faces to balance the implementation of long-stalled financial reforms with the demands of its large rural base.

With a healthy parliamentary majority and an eye on bringing India back to the 9% growth rates or more before the global slowdown, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country is ready to up the pace of legislative change.

Following are some of the major reforms in the pipeline:

Pensions

No foreign firm is allowed to operate in the country's pension sector and private players have only a limited presence.

Though Manmohan Singh in November named pension reform as a priority, plans to free up the sector for foreign firms and allow more private players lack political consensus. Fast progress is not expected in the winter session.

Banking

India has for years talked about allowing a greater role for foreign banks and giving equal voting rights to foreigners in private-sector banks, currently limited to 10 percent irrespective of their actual holding.

However, progress stalled in the wake of the global downturn.

The Congress-led ruling alliance in its first term had proposed to bring down the government's stake in state-run banks to about 33 percent to allow banks to raise funds on their own to meet their capital requirements.

The proposal never got parliament's approval and is unlikely to be revived, seen as politically risky in a post-Lehman world.

Insurance

The government plans to table a bill in parliament to raise the foreign stake limits in insurers to 49 percent from 26 percent.

The life insurance market was opened nine years ago, but companies are not allowed to raise debt or go public in their first decade of operation, putting the onus on shareholders to fund costlier growth.

The bill stalled in the last parliament and expectations of quick progress in this winter session are slim.

Labour

The World Bank has rated India's labour laws as among the globe's most rigid, but reform may prove a political minefield.

Only about 10% of the nearly 400-million strong workforce is in the organised sector.

Large businesses want the government to make it easier to hire and fire, as current retrenchment laws force companies to hire casual rather than skilled labour at the expense of productivity and competitiveness.

A United Nations body has said reform in areas such as labour are key for India to regain growth rates of 9-10 percent a year.

But with millions of jobs shed in the wake of the global slowdown, labour reform could well be left on the backburner.

Disinvestment

Raising money through stake-sales in state-run firms could help the government tide over a 16-year high fiscal deficit.

But divestment has made slower-than-expected progress in Congress' second term even though the party no longer relies on the support of the communists, who hobbled divestment during their time in the ruling coalition.

Since the May election, the government has proposed to sell at least a 10-percent stake of all state-run firms.