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Exactly how will you keep up the euphoria for five years, Mr Prime Minister?

As one puts greater distance between the events of May 11 and 13 and oneself, helped along by the inexorable march of time, one thought keeps breaking the surface: somehow, Prime Minister A B Vajpayee has prematurely pulled the nuclear trigger, that he has indulged in a grave error of calculation.

Of course, the chief executive of a nation does not have the liberty available to arm-chair commentators like myself, of forming an opinion while keeping a certain distance between oneself and the event commentated upon. As an active participant in the unfolding drama of contemporary history, not for him the luxury of chronicling it, or evaluating it.

Still, making history does not preclude one from learning from it. And in the prime minister's case, the past has been kind enough to leave behind footnotes in the sands of the Rajasthani desert. Having overlooked them as far as I can see, is it his intention to make history or repeat it?

In 1971, as she bifurcated Pakistan and exploded its founding dogma, the two-nation theory, Indira Gandhi seemed set to go on for ever and ever. Yet, by the time she masterminded the Pokhran blasts three years later, her administration had slid downhill. The peaceful nuclear explosion was meant to cock a snook at the western imperialist powers, as much as it was meant to revive her flagging popularity. It succeeded in doing both, and if she had gone in for a snap-poll at that point in time there would have been nothing left of the Opposition to challenge her three years later or any time in the foreseeable future.

But hubris makes fools of wise men and worse of wise women. What Indira Gandhi failed to see in her moment of glory was that the high she took the nation to in 1974 could not last forever. In the normal course of things, elections were due a full two years later, and given the legendary voter amnesia, there was no way he would endorse her for what she had done 700 days earlier. Yet, the Pokhran flash had blinded her to reality.

What successive administrations in India -- and, I daresay, elsewhere -- have shown is that the honeymoon between the electors and the elected has been shrinking, and never more than now, when the information boom is truly on us. The power of the byte has reduced the ruling class into People Like Us, or worse. For a nation used to reading edited prose emanating from the politicians and forming opinions based on a subeditor's skill, the live images -- courtesy our telly screens -- have brought home the reality about the kind of people who govern its fate.

Rajiv Gandhi, for instance, with his mammoth mandate, saw the nation show him the thumbs-down just two years after he became the darling of the masses, after which he was virtually a lameduck, despite his parliamentary superiority. His successor, V P Singh, had an even shorter affair with the electorate, proving that the greater the popular expectations, the shorter the honeymoon.

P V Narasimha Rao, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral were all lucky, in that since there was hardly any expectation of them, the extent of disappointment remained within limits. The widespread opinion of them was that they were doing a holding job, till someone with greater claims to the chair took over.

Which is where A B Vajpayee comes in. As India's man of the moment, as someone heading the first genuine non-Congress formation at the Centre, he came to power riding a crest of popularity, even if only 23 per cent of India had voted him in. But barely a fortnight atop a coalition exposed him to charges of waffling, and the first BJP government looked set to lose its public appeal, a prospect that must have given the gerontocrats in Nagpur sleepless nights and clueless days. The nuclear blasts -- an article of faith with the BJP, that predates the mandir-masjid imbroglio -- thus restored to the party and its government some of the sheen it lost thanks to Jayalalitha and her cohorts.

But the worst part of generating such euphoria, is sustaining it. For Vajpayee, the task becomes all the more challenging, since he has virtually his entire tenure to see through. To expect him to keep up the momentum his party gained through Pokhran II for the next five years, a feat unmatched by even Indira Gandhi, who had both a military triumph and a nuclear achievement to her credit, is, in my opinion, asking a little too much of the prime minister who is clearly a hostage to his obstreperous allies.

It would also be too much to expect the BJP, which is the savviest party among the bunch strutting about on the political proscenium, not to know this simple fact. Or, to expect it not to have a counter-strategy in place that will once again boost its chances in the next round of balloting, whenever it is.

The BJP has projected itself as a party of machismo, in contrast to the nambypambies that are challenging it for the ruling space. It has never hidden its jingoist sentiments, as its shrill pronouncements since May 11 have so clearly highlighted. The only way, it believes, that the "unfinished business of Partition" can be wound up, is through a military engagement with Pakistan, never mind the human, economic and social costs of such a confrontation.

Also, as Indira Gandhi so amply illustrated in 1971, a military triumph over Pakistan pays rich dividends.

Given this, I would expect the BJP government to engage in an eyeball-to-eyeball, even a fullscale military engagement, with Islamabad before it calls the next polls, for no domestic achievement can quite give it the kind of mandate it seeks the next time round.

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy