Not many will mourn the passing of 2001 but in the A.B. Vajpayee household there will be an extra deep sigh of relief. He could not have had a more horrible year. Not only did nothing go right for him or his Government, but the gods seemed to conspire to make everything go wrong. The year began with Tehelka and those unforgettable images of Vajpayee's handpicked party president greedily stashing away ill-gotten money. And, ended with the Government's own auditor pronouncing that officials in the Defence Ministry had wasted more than Rs 1,000 crore on unneeded defence purchases. The Kargil war, said the CAG, was the excuse for not following normal checks but the war was over long before the ministry's purchases arrived. Most Indians continue to puzzle over why we needed to spend $2,500 each on coffins that could have been made in India for almost nothing. It was the proverbial last nail in the Vajpayee Government's credibility but the misfortunes 2001 brought did not end there as we saw from the December 13 terrorist attack on Parliament.

So the last days of this cruellest of years saw war clouds gathering over the subcontinent and Vajpayee in the most unenviable position he has ever been in. If he does not avenge the attack on Parliament, he will look like a wimp in the eyes of Indians and if he does attack Pakistan, he will look irresponsible in the eyes of the world.

He has not had much luck in 2001. But if it has begun to change Pakistan might save him-and the subcontinent-from a very ugly escalation by making sincere efforts to close down groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed. If all we get from General Pervez Musharraf is the usual bluster and bravado and if another major terrorist strike follows, Vajpayee will have no option but military action. Cynics say that with elections in Uttar Pradesh due early next year and with the abysmal quality of his leadership, he already has no choice but to go for it. Jingoism always unites India and in Uttar Pradesh it could unite the Hindu vote.

The euphoria, though, does not last long and since a decisive victory is unlikely, war will serve only a limited purpose. At the end of the war, if it takes place at all, Vajpayee will still have to examine why he has been such an uninspiring leader. Without reducing the argument to a facetious level, may I recommend that he consult Aamir Khan on improving. Before writing this piece, I had the pleasure of watching the Britannia-Lagaan cricket match in Mumbai last week. The Lagaan team won, as it did in the movie, and at the end of it Khan and his team sang and danced for the vast crowd. The songs from the movie are patriotic anyway but with Khan doing the singing in real life the Brabourne Stadium became for a few moments an extraordinary spectacle of nationalistic fervour. So incredible was the audience reaction that it caused more than a few spectators to wonder aloud why our political leaders found it so hard to strike a similar chord.

In the old days when Vajpayee was just an opposition leader, he could do what Khan did effortlessly and at a more serious level. What has gone wrong since he became prime minister? Many, many things, of which the most crucial continues to be the fact that he has made no effort to change methods of governance and the average Indian is sick and tired of the old ways. We can, for instance, no longer afford a government that spends more on itself than it does on improving the lot of ordinary Indians. We cannot afford a government that borrows so recklessly that it spends more than 70 per cent of its revenue on servicing its debts. When you consider that out of what is left, we spend a huge amount on defence (often it turns out on the wrong things), you do not need to be an economist to know that there cannot be much left for roads, schools, hospitals or drinking water. Everyone knows that this is wrong but nobody in the Vajpayee Government makes any effort to change things.

There has not been even the smallest attempt to reduce the size of the government. So we continue to waste taxpayers' money on ministries like Information & Broadcasting that became obsolete long ago. Armies of obstructing officials man offices and institutions that exist for no valid reason. Meanwhile, the only improvements that we see in the quality of our lives come in areas that the Government has decided to stay out of.

The result is that the Government has become India's biggest NPA (non-performing asset). This can only change if Vajpayee realises how important leadership is when you take on the prime minister's job. He has spent the first two years of his tenure behaving as if he were a chairman in gracious retirement. With three years still to go, he needs to understand that his role is not simply ceremonial but executive and the country is desperate for executive action.