What Happened to BJP?

The results of 2009 national elections must have been shocking for BJP. Nobody imagined such a bad performance by BJP. Starting from minuscule numbers in 1984, it went on to rule the country for 5 years and 13 days under Atal Bihar Vajpayee. It looked promising and many thought Indian democracy has matured with the rise of the second party at the national level. Five years of BJP rule were good for India and were expected to return to power sans the “India Shining” campaign in 2004. What happened to BJP?
My first memories of BJP as a party are of Mr. Vajpayee's masterful speeches where I used to go with my Dad. He was witty and used simple language. Later I used to read about many prominent personalities joining the party. It created a lot of promise riding on the image of Mr. Vajpayee. Congress at that point of time was suffering from lethargy. Its leaders looked tired, uninterested in India or too aristocratic. Slowly it started to loose its ground. Emergence of regional parties in northern India also contributed to congress’s fall. Finally it culminated in Congress losing a lot of ground and BJP coming to power.
But once BJP lost in the 2004 elections, it is on a downward swing. What happened to it? In my view, the reasons are as follows:
1) Most importantly, I feel, BJP never prepared the second rung of leaders. Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj etc were visible in media and were articulate but were never mass leaders. They were seen on television and appreciated by intellectuals but India lives in villages and these leaders never connected with the real voters.
2) BJP always tried to use the Hindutva as its main plank. But in a country, though driven by emotions, people don’t remember an emotion for long. It can work once but will not work always. That is where BJP lost the plot. Even in 2009 elections, it tried to rely on that, which proved to be counter-productive. This could have worked, had it been wisely mixed with economic issues and rural development.
3) Rahul Gandhi was the third most important reason. He is a Gandhi scion and India always had a fascination for Gandhi family. He is smart and understood the voters psyche pretty well. The emotional attachment can only be leveraged by connecting with masses. He did precisely that in UP and other places.
This is my two cents on BJP's defeat in 2009 elections. I still feel, it is one of the most organized and important pillars of our democracy and its strength will provide stability and supremacy to the largest democracy of the World.

Cheers