Gandhi v Modi: crunch time for Congress as India prepares to vote

Rahul Gandhi seems angrier now. For years, even close friends wondered if he had the drive to follow in the footsteps of his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, all of whom were Indian prime ministers. When he fronted the Congress party’s ill-fated campaign for a general election in 2014, his speeches, often in faltering Hindi, mostly fell flat. Five years later, he led his party to another bruising defeat, even losing his own parliamentary seat in the long-time family stronghold of Amethi, in northern India. Soon afterwards he resigned as party chief.

And yet in the run-up to the general election, which starts on April 19th, Mr Gandhi has found the fire in his belly. That was one takeaway when The Economist joined the final leg of a 6,300-mile (10,000km) journey across India that he finished last month. In rallies across the state of Maharashtra he denounced Narendra Modi, the prime minister, as a threat to democracy. He castigated the tycoons who dominate its economy. And he deplored its rampant inequality. “There’s no space for you in this country,” he told one crowd in (now fluent) Hindi. “I don’t understand why you’re not doing anything about it.”