The arrival was historic. The Bharatiya Janata Party captured the vital centre of Indian politics on the strength of being a party with a difference. Its tryst with power marked the most decisive shift in political culture since Independence. The last gasps of the Congress century, the wreckage of the discredited politics of social justice, a charismatic national leader from outside the dynasty-the context called for change, and the right turn was freedom from a hoary past. A little more than four years in power and it looks like it all happened sometime in distant history. The BJP today is a parody of what it was four years ago, at least in the eyes of those who saw in its ascent a redemptive break in the life of the nation. Today, the party looks more than tired and tiring, in spite of the much-hyped facelift. Rather, it has a face deformed by power. A face that is not particularly distinctive from its predecessors. Allegations of sleaze and corruption, patronage and misgovernance-the image of the BJP in power today is remote from the essential idea of BJP. Maybe power is a great leveller, even if the power of BJP is not absolute but relative as in a coalition. Nothing else seems to explain why yesterday's party with a difference has become just another, familiar party.

The evolution of the BJP is a morality tale. Getting into power is much easier than managing power. Idealism of the party and a vacant space in politics and the popular quest for change made it possible for the BJP. But those who got the mandate didn't realise the historical resonance of the moment-or the political meaning of it. It is almost like the post-1989 scenario in eastern Europe: those who inherited heaven after the collapse of the communist hell didn't take much time to mime their erstwhile tormentors, to reduce the romance of liberation to a worn-out banality. Culturally, something similar is happening in the BJP. The party has failed miserably to understand that the mandate is an investment of faith and it has to generate returns. Really, this great letdown should not have happened so soon. It should not have happened at all. For the mandate requires that the BJP has the responsibility to make full sense-and use-of the political space it has come to occupy. The space of India's first right-wing party in power. There is no difference between a mandate squandered and a people betrayed.