Among the unwritten rules governing contemporary Indian politics-at least for the past three decades-is that a government loses its way midstream and becomes vulnerable to a rising tide of anti-incumbency. Till a year ago, this seemed to be the predestined fate of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA Government. The BJP and its allies were worsted in the key assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Uttaranchal. The Congress under Sonia Gandhi was staging a dramatic comeback.

Fortunately for Vajpayee, democracy is not governed by the laws of inevitability. Since the Godhra carnage in February last year and its bloody aftermath in Gujarat, the BJP appears to have rediscovered itself. A narrow win in Goa and a resounding triumph in Gujarat have set the stage for a wider recovery. Last week, as if to drive home the point, Vajpayee effected a Cabinet reshuffle with an eye to the next round of assembly polls. The talk of a snap poll any time between October and February next year is doing the rounds.

The country's most exhaustive political tracker, the India Today-ORG-MARG Mood of the Nation poll last August (it, August 26, 2002) detected the first signs of the anti-incumbency tide being rolled back. Nearly six months later, the trend has crystallised quite dramatically. The January 2003 Mood of the Nation poll suggests that the popular vote for the NDA may touch 42 per cent, giving the ruling coalition a clear majority of between 310 and 320 seats in the event of a snap poll. If the BJP and the BSP strike a poll alliance in Uttar Pradesh, the NDA tally may even reach 340.

On the face of it, the shifts are small. In just 12 months, the BJP and its allies have gained an extra 0.8 per cent votes; in the same period the Congress combine has lost 2 per cent votes. Today, the ruling combine has 0.2 per cent more votes than 1999 and the Congress-led alliance 0.1 per cent less. Yet these small shifts are enough to increase the NDA majority remarkably from 32 to 48. If the BJP continues its advance even modestly, the outcome could be a landslide.

Most heartening for the BJP is that the surge is most marked in its traditional strongholds and, particularly, in the Hindi-heartland states where assembly elections are due later this year. The opinion poll suggests that the BJP is comfortably ahead of the Congress in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. It has recovered its position in Jharkhand and is on a roll in Assam. Together with its allies, it is also well placed in Orissa and Haryana.

However, the BJP is still nowhere close to realising its party President M. Venkaiah Naidu's dream of winning 300 seats on its own. The improvement in its support is still concentrated in its traditional areas where it is almost reaching saturation point. The BJP has to perform much better in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and Bihar before it can increase its tally.

Reeling from the after-effects of Gujarat, the Congress seems to be in a state of disarray. According to the poll, the Congress and its allies (for the purposes of consistency, it includes the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu) will lose nearly 25 seats, thereby shrinking their 1999 tally further. This means that the Congress will actually be reduced to double digits and descend to an all-time low. Apart from Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Uttaranchal where it is holding, the Congress has lost ground in the past 12 months.

What in shorthand is often referred to as Moditva or the Gujarat effect has played an important role in shoring up the BJP's support. As much as 43 per cent nationally-a very high figure-is elated over the Gujarat verdict. Yet, reduced to specifics, the jubilation is concentrated in the North (48 per cent), the West (46 per cent) and the youth. In other words, Moditva has galvanised the party in its core areas and even energised it. Read with the pattern of support for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the support for a law to ban religious conversions (another VHP demand), they suggest that the BJP would find it difficult to abandon the Hindutva tag during any future election campaign.

In Gujarat, a militant Hindutva was tagged with a hardline stand on national security and terrorism. The poll suggests that the importance of these as top-of-the-mind issues has diminished over the past year. In other words, unless war clouds intervene or terrorists strike in a dramatic way, jingoistic rhetoric will not determine the way people vote. However, if Pakistan and terrorism return to the political agenda-and this may well happen in the event of a war in Iraq leading to wider Islamic unrest-the BJP's shrillness would correspond with popular thinking. The poll shows quite clearly that those who support the BJP and other NDA parties are significantly more likely to be swayed by anti-Pakistan rhetoric than those who support the Congress. National security and anti-terrorism have come to be more closely identified with the BJP than with the Congress. For a party that once screamed about the "foreign hand" from rooftops, this amounts to losing an important political plank.

At the same time it is intriguing that despite the BJP being on the right side of an emerging ideological mood, Vajpayee's own popularity has not increased. There is a significant rise in his performance ratings but no corresponding rise in those who perceive him as the prime minister of their choice. This mismatch is significant. It suggests that unlike in 1999, Vajpayee's ability to secure an incremental vote for the NDA has diminished. Today, but not for the first time, the combined vote tally of the NDA exceeds the prime minister's own popularity. At the same time, it is significantly more than the support for the BJP. This implies that Vajpayee's indispensability persists, less as an inspiration and more as a reassuring coalition-builder.

This leads on to what is perhaps the most interesting finding of the poll. If the appeal of Hindutva is confined to the BJP's core areas-which has, of course, expanded in the past two decades-and Vajpayee's popularity is static, what has helped the NDA to cling to its 1999 vote?

The answer lies in a combination of performance and hope. The poll show a small (3 per cent) rise in the number of those who feel they are better off and an equally small (2 per cent) decline in those who think they are worse off. At the same time there is a jump, from 21 per cent in August 2002 to 27 per cent now, of those who think they will be better off in the next six months. Likewise, the corresponding figure of those who believe they will be worse off has fallen from 24 per cent in August 2002 to 21 per cent. Curiously, the expectation of better times is most marked in poor states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand.

A discernible feel-good mood is complemented by a feeling that there has been an all-round improvement in services where the Centre has a role to play. Good roads and better telephones-solid middle-class issues-are paying dividends. Good governance or su-raj may still be a distant dream but the NDA can at least hope to benefit from a visible improvement in living standards.

As the next general election, due before October 2004, draws nearer, the Vajpayee Government will firm up its strategy. The fine-tuning will depend on political exigencies but Vajpayee is certain to be comforted by the knowledge that he starts with the advantage of an energised support. And without an anti-incumbency mood to counter.