In an interview to this newspaper this week, the prime minister identified two immediate concerns: security and the economy. Conceding the post-Kargil imperative to hike the defence budget, he talked about burying the bitter remains of Kargil and reviving the dialogue with Pakistan. This return from election rhetoric to sober pragmatism is more than welcome. The lesson from the Kargil misadventure may be the folly of complacency, but the only exit from a mutually debilitating arms race and acrimony is through Lahore. Vajpayee now has the mandate to resume the Lahore process and, the astute politician that he is, he will grab it. But he will have to muster all his charms as a benign patriarch to build a national consensus on diplomatic initiatives with Pakistan and on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, given the inordinately jingoistic utterances that resonated through the campaign period. Happily for him, a political consensus of sorts prevails on economic reforms. Vajpayee has zeroedin on public-sector undertakings and the small-scale sector for immediate attention. Fair enough, but a wide spectrum of concerns are begging for action. Accelerated development of infrastructure is just one of these.

The prime minister will, however, have his hands full with the pulls and pressures of coalition partners and conflicting aspirations of his own partymen. Sure, he has bid good riddance to Jayalalitha-style tantrums, but he will be kept busy juggling the carrot and the stick to the George Fernandeses and Mamata Banerjees and Murasoli Marans and Kalyan Singhs basking under his umbrella. A fidgety opposition -- with nary a care about the electorate's rejoinder to the election foisted on them -- is already murmuring about this election being a mere semi-final and is bound to keep him on edge. Having said that, Vajpayee has for long been seen as India's man of destiny. The people have given him an opportunity to rise above quotidian affairs and indulge in some grand gestures to ring in hiscountry's transition into the next century. Let's see what he delivers with a blink and a smile.