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This report in UK newspaper The Times, says the election campaign of Mr. Rahul Gandhi faces many hurdles and may have misfired. As the nation's mood has shifted towards economic development the idea of depending on a fractured coalition led by the Congress party seems less likely to deliver where it really counts. 

Mr. Gandhi is seen as a reluctant leader and opposition leaders with local regional support are vying to take over the prime minister's position from Mr. Gandhi if the opposition party alliance wins. Mr. Gandhi has said he would agree to this and this is seen as a lack of decisive leadership. A fragmented coalition of parties with local and ethnic or caste based politics, would create a indecisive government with a lack of the leadership needed for a strong economic development agenda.  

As the 2019 election campaign has unfolded other problems have emerged and the momentum for Congress from local assembly elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in 2018, which allowed it to recover a bit from a disastrous national election in 2014, has dissipated. The Congress Party's big policy announcement of universal basic income of Rs. 72,000, or about $1000 for poor families was announced only 4 days before the beginning of the election on April 11, and failed to register with the public. 

Because it lacks the national presence that it once had under Mr. Nehru in the 1950's and Indira Gandhi in the 1960's, and because of factions splitting away from the party, the failure to cultivate new leadership outside the Nehru family, the Congress party is only in name only connected to the party of the era of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi had two leaders at his side one from Allahbad, Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, and the other from Nadiad, Gujarat, Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel. Nehru was more conversant with the world outside, Patel was a disciplined orga nizer of the 1934 and 1937 elections and the 1942 Quit India Movement. Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi was so worried Mahatma Gandhi who was from Porbandar, Gujarat, might choose Vallabhbhai to lead a new post independence India that Mahatma Gandhi was aware of it. Finally Nehru's articulate vision for a modern India led to Mahatma Gandhi choosing Nehru as prime minister and Vallabhbhai Patel as deputy prime minister. Nehru and his successors in Congress party lacked the discipline and execution abilities to achieve development goals and India struggled with a lack of capital, technology, and knowledge workforce in the 1950-1990 period, much like China during the same period. What one is seeing today one could say with Mr. Narendra Modi who is also from Gujarat in western India is a return to what Mr. Vallabhbahi Patel would focus on if he was to lead a modern India. Gujarat is a commercially focused state with a long coastline near Mumbai, the focus on development and execution of projects for development was learned by Mr. Modi with a keen observation of the development in China. Basically it is an entirely different mindset, a governance culture as Mr. Modi calls it with roots he sees in the the discipline and leadership of Mr. Patel for economic improvement. Here nothing really matters as much as not missing a single opportunity, the old mindset of "chalta hai" or everything goes is antagonistic by its very nature, as Mr. Modi told the Hindustan Times in a recent interview.

A recent report on Gorakpur election in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state with 90 seats showed how delivering on projects counts in smaller towns and villages. The report in The Hindustan Times showed a picture of a Nishad backward caste family head pointing to a well built and new structure that was a toilet built under Mr. Modi's scheme for a Clean India, for 100%  toilet target for India, and to the cooking gas scheme that delivered cooking gas to most families dependent on firewood. Pointing to this he says we are going to vote for development. 

Mr. Modi's approach to development in the second term is very likely to differ from the first. The first term focused on coming to grips with the problems of avast country of over a billion people. Building up inputs of capital for investment was a major development through GST, and shifting a cash informal economy to electronic deposits  a part of the demonetisation incentives. Moving up the learning curve in project execution for roads, rail, telecom and other infrastructure was the other development. Taking the entire country into development including poor and women in rural areas, was another focus because India lacked the development changes that reduced malnutrition and disease that  China made in its early period after the 1950's.

The focus in the second term would be to catch up to China in many ways including infrastructure, services, manufacturing, because of the momentum and experience from the first term, including a focus on new job creation through manufacturing and construction.