There are enough problems in India to keep all kinds of political animals gainfully employed. Governance has come to imply sustained crisis management, with the disillusioned voter refusing to give anyone a clear mandate. Keeping reforms on track calls for tough measures which have their own political implications. On the side, there is a power crisis, a sea-change in external relations, uncertainty about the fate of the rupee, relatively depressed stock markets and tropical diseases of epidemic proportions. It is shameful that the most imaginative response to all this that the BJP could come up with is to buy a new set of wheels. No doubt party president L. K. Advani’s rath will be all gussied up with fool’s gold, but the BJP, which can now offer neither dream nor agenda, must learn to think beyond pinchbeck. The yatra, of course, has a good, solid theme, focusing on nation-building in the fiftieth year of Independence. But unfortunately, the Gandhi clan holds all intellectual property rights on the idea of nation-building, and everyone from the British Museum to the two-bit wannabe writer or filmmaker in India is already on the fifty years bandwagon. Advani’s predicament would be funny, were it not also very sad.

Today, the BJP can no longer afford to push the Hindutva agenda that had made the first rath yatra such a resounding success. It would immediately alienate the regional parties that it is eager to forge ties with. Besides, none of the yatras since 1990 has been an unqualified success. Murli Manohar Joshi’s expedition to Srinagar got some attention only because his rath failed to get him there. As for the others, people did go out to see them, just as they go out to see the circus go by. Everyone loves a good tamasha. But mass contact was definitely not achieved and there was no groundswell of support after the event. Other parties that deployed raths — or vehicles that looked suspiciously like raths — to get better mileage on their campaigns also got an indifferent response. Even N. T. Rama Rao, who held the global patent on the diesel-powered rath, found subsidised rice a far more compelling electoral argument than his Chaitanya Ratham.

In the current political climate, rath yatras are the last resort of a party that has run out of ideas and the imagination to forge new ones. The electorate is in no mood to even consider dreams. It wants results, which the BJP is in no position to promise because of its isolation. It is surprising that the party, whose growth was fuelled solely by the intelligent use of the imagination, cannot think of new ways to make contact with the voter. It is trapped in a mythological parody, sending Advani out to slay the little Bihari mai ka lal who had had the temerity to intercept the Ram Avatar seven years ago. It should realise that remodelled LCVs packed with leaders burbling along country roads do not add to vote banks. They only add to pollution and the oil pool deficit. They do entertain the masses, of course. But on that count, the travelling zoos do a much better job with their very own yatras.