It was the change that was supposed to demonstrate India's government was serious about reform after years of missteps: Defying critics in their own coalition as well as the opposition party, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his new economic team, led by well-respected Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, in August successfully opened the country's retail market to foreign companies including Wal-Mart Stores and Tesco. But the policy has turned into the latest embarrassment for the beleaguered government struggling to revive a stalled economy. Wal-Mart has other reasons to backtrack from India, where regulators have been investigating alleged violations of foreign investment rules, but the American company's snub comes at a particularly bad time for Singh and his economic team.