Lesson 1: Listen to your customer or perish!
Congress erred into believing that it could afford to continue to provide electors freebies and choose to remain ignorant of the larger and substantially changing demand and preferences of the voters. Before, it could take stock of the situation it found itself in a situation where the party was facing a target customer-set whose preferences had changed. The voters had changed their preferences. They were no longer dependent on government to dole out of roti, kapda aur makaan. Instead, they wanted enabling infrastructure in terms of education, jobs and business enabling policies which was largely corruption free and bipartisanship.
The Congress party failed to assess this tectonic shift in the preferences of the Indian voters. The newly floated Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Modi-led BJP had somewhat been able to read the sentiments of this section of voters better.