By Rajdeep Sardesai
We live in the Instagram-reel age, where a short, sharp sound bite on video resonates far more than an erudite debate. That partly explains why, on counting day in Bihar, a clip of mine—blowing a whistle and remarking that Prashant Kishor had been brought down from “hero to zero”—instantly went viral. While the BJP-backed right-wing ecosystem appeared to derive vicarious pleasure from the downfall of their one-time poster boy, who had played an important role in Narendra Modi’s successful 2014 prime-ministerial campaign before pulling away, Kishor’s supporters were livid, convinced I had trolled their leader.
Whistling in a TV studio was admittedly poor form, but no malice was intended. The political fortunes of the celebrated consultant-turned-politician have been speculated about for months, and the Bihar voter delivered a resounding verdict: the Jan Suraj Party won zero seats and only 3.4 per cent of the vote. The legitimate question now is whether Prashant Kishor has proven to be a non-starter in the hurly-burly of electoral politics or whether it is premature to write him off. Launching a successful political start-up in India is incredibly hard.
Only Arvind Kejriwal, in recent times, can claim near-unicorn status, becoming Delhi chief minister within months of founding the Aam Aadmi Party and later securing a big win in Punjab. The victory in the compact city-state of Delhi rode the India Against Corruption movement, while the Punjab triumph reflected Sikh frustration with existing choices. Expansion, however, has been difficult, and Kejriwal has struggled to sustain the early high valuation of his political stock.
In an earlier era, NT Rama Rao rose meteorically in Andhra Pradesh, but he was a charismatic film star in a region where the lines between on- and off-screen imagery blur easily. The Asom Gana Parishad also broke through instantly in 1985 on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment in Assam, yet lost its sheen quickly. For Kishor, the challenge was doubly tough in Bihar, with its entrenched caste affiliations. That he chose to walk the talk, criss-crossing the state for three years to build a party, is admirable. He could easily have continued monetising an impressive—and highly lucrative—business model of strategising successful election campaigns across parties. Whether driven by ambition, hubris, or appetite for risk, Kishor picked the road less travelled. He had chutzpah, was media-savvy and hard working, but lacked the key to electoral success: converting visibility into votes. Votes are not earned in the digital universe; they are won through street credibility built on trust and experience. The redoubtable Kanshi Ram, founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, took years to make his mark.
He famously said, “The first election is fought to lose, the second to defeat others, the third to win,” underscoring the grind of sustaining a party through ups and downs. Kishor tried to short-circuit that formula, relying on massive social-media outreach to create buzz among Bihar’s youth. Yet, without a distinct caste identity or a finely tuned organisational setup, the initial excitement faded. Like Kejriwal, Kishor banked on youthful volunteers to power the Jan Suraj Party. Positioning himself as anti-establishment, he sought to capitalise on fatigue—if not disaffection—with Bihar’s ruling duopoly: Nitish Kumar and the Yadav family. The issues he raised—joblessness, industrial stagnation, out-migration—resonated with those lamenting Bihar’s decline, especially the marginalised urban middle class. Not surprisingly, many Jan Suraj candidates were middle-class professionals: doctors, retired bureaucrats, police officers. As a narrative, Kishor’s assault on the old order hit the right note; as a vote-catching machinery, its appeal was limited. The two main alliances command roughly 80 per cent of the vote, anchored in solid caste equations. Cracking that charmed circle requires disrupting those equations—something a catch-all “Bihar First” slogan cannot achieve. Caste identities still trump Bihari sub-nationalism at the ballot box, a reality Kishor has now discovered. He hoped—mistakenly— that the “Yuva” vote would be a game-changer. After all, 22 per cent of Bihar’s electorate is aged 18-29, a sizeable cohort. But an even larger bloc is the “Mahila”: women have become the real X-factor in Indian elections. While the Yuva are splintered along income lines, the Mahila voter forms a near-monolith around which Nitish Kumar’s model of basic welfarism and cash transfers is built. When Kishor promised to lift the liquor ban, he sparked debate among the chattering classes. Lifting the prohibition might make economic sense; in rural Bihar, however, women strongly endorse the ban, seeing public-health and law-order gains that outweigh any fiscal benefit. On the ground, the youth spoke animatedly about Kishor; women scarcely registered him. In the end, the M-factor simply overwhelmed the Y-factor. So, is this the end of the road for Kishor? Yes—and no. Yes, the limits of his media-driven marketing have been exposed. Yet, within the next decade, Bihar will enter the post-Nitish-Lalu era, desperate for alternatives. If Kishor stays the course and reinvents himself as less of a one-man show, willing to work steadfastly with a wider cross-caste coalition, he may still script a comeback. Could he become the resourceful, fire-in-the-belly Bihari face that a diminished Congress ur gently needs? Post-script: One question hounded Kishor throughout the campaign—was he the BJP’s B-team? When I asked why he had never faced a central-agency probe despite operating in a cash-rich business like political consulting, his retort was typically combative: “You haven’t been questioned either; does that make you the B-team too?” Touché.
The writer is senior journalist and author