In the backrooms of the BJP a form of introspection is under way. Ministers, MPs and party workers ask each other in puzzled tones, what is going wrong? How could the party of Hindu nationalism be wiped out in a state where this ideology once drew Hindu nationalists from far and near wearing saffron headbands and bearing bricks with "Ram" written on them to build a temple in Ayodhya? Why did the temple evoke so little response? Why didn't even the threat of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism frighten the voters of India's politically most important state into voting for the party that projects itself as the special guardian of Bharat Mata? During the campaign, the BJP leaders did their best to stress the importance of Hindu nationalism in these troubled times. "This election will have an impact on both national and international politics," said Chief Minister Rajnath Singh, "Pakistan will be the happiest country if the BJP is defeated in the state." And, yet the voters rejected the BJP in favour of leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati who use caste to divide the Hindu vote and who see no threat to the country from either India's Muslims or Pakistan. What is going wrong?

Everything. And, if the current introspection does not lead to drastic changes in the party's approach to governance, we can safely predict that what happened in the recent assembly elections will repeat itself when the Lok Sabha elections come round in two years. If the BJP wants to retain its position as the main challenger to the Congress at the national level, it will need to begin by recognising that it has so far not understood the importance of good governance. Hindu nationalism and issues like temples and Islamic terrorism can bring power within grasp but they are completely useless when it comes to running governments.

For this you need new ideas and a new kind of leader. If N. Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh and Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh have managed to win more than once it is only because whatever their flaws they have attempted to bring in good governance. Naidu has introduced a measure of e-governance and battled officials steeped in old ways to bring the people cleaner towns and villages, better healthcare and education. He has tried to reduce red tape by introducing file-clearing weeks in which he surprises officers by suddenly arriving on their doorstep. Digvijay may not have been quite so melodramatic in his approach, but has worked towards improving access to schools and speeding up rural development. Both states still have miles to go, but there are signs that someone is trying to make a difference.

In Uttar Pradesh, by contrast, the past five years have seen a decline into lawlessness, chaos and corruption so rapid that senior bureaucrats had taken to describing it as worse than Bihar. Surely, stories of what was going on must have reached Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's ears but he chose to ignore them and continue inflicting administratively incompetent and politically irrelevant chief ministers on the state. It was only when things got really bad that Rajnath was given the job but it was too late for him to do anything but tinker and manipulate. He will be remembered mainly for giving the state yet another caste category: most backward as opposed to other backward. He should have realised that when it comes to playing the caste game, he is an amateur compared to Mulayam and Mayawati.

To come back to governance, the problem in the BJP lies at the very top. The prime minister's approach to governance has been to continue ruling in the same way as everyone did before him. There are in Delhi government departments so obsolete that they should have been closed down years ago. Why do they continue to exist?

There are officials who fritter away taxpayers' money on things that nobody needs them to be doing. We do not need them to organise film festivals or even writers' conferences. We do not need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting or a Press Information Bureau or a Ministry of Food Processing. We do need bigger and more powerful ministries dealing with social and physical infrastructure. The government needs to concentrate on things like healthcare, schools, sanitation and infrastructure. The Central government needed a total overhaul when Vajpayee became prime minister but he chose to do nothing.

Well, despite the gloomy news from the assembly elections, there is no threat to the Vajpayee Government. So the prime minister still has two years to show us what he can do. He could, perhaps, order an internal review of the Central Government to see how the size of his Government can be reduced and what changes can be made to make ordinary Indians feel that there is someone up there doing something. Even if he makes a list of five things and does them, he will be remembered as more than a prime minister in semi-retirement which, sadly, is what he has been so far.