Prashant Kishor looks to break the Bihar binary

IN recent decades, electoral politics in Bihar has almost always panned out in a binary format, resulting in head-to-head battles between parties of socialist vintage. Even the so-called mainline parties — the BJP and the Congress — have remained within the orbit of the Janata Dal (United) or the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and have not been able to carve out an independent space in the hurly-burly of Bihar’s politics.

The BJP latched on to the JD(U), helmed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, while the Congress hung on to Lalu Prasad Yadav, the RJD founder and head. These parties created coalitions consisting of larger partners as well as smaller outfits that derived their primary importance from caste-based identities. Bihar never made room for a third party or formation, unlike its neighbour, Uttar Pradesh, that usually witnessed multi-cornered contests.

However, the upcoming Assembly elections could rework the political dynamics with the emergence of the Jan Suraaj Party (JSP), established by Prashant Kishor, once a strategist and consultant to nearly every party that counts as electorally significant, regardless of its ideological affinity. Kishor — PK to well-wishers and colleagues — will baulk at these appellations, but that’s what he was after he left the UN’s strategic planning and social policy group in Africa as a gangling 34-year-old in 2011 and landed in Narendra Modi’s inner circle in Gandhinagar.

Modi, then Gujarat CM, seeded Kishor in his election behemoth with an eye on the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. At the peak of his power, Kishor was considered to be as integral to the Modi schema as Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley.

Many in the BJP argued that had Kishor not ‘appropriated’ credit for Modi’s 2014 victory, he would still be ensconced in the Prime Minister’s charmed circle — but that was not to be. But he left a national footprint as an advisor to parties such as the Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party during elections. He sundered his links with each of them not out of rancour but to foster his ambition as an independent political leader of consequence. Kishor wanted to forge his own party and fight elections, preferably without tying up with another entity.

The JSP (which translates as People’s Good Governance Party) came into being on Gandhi Jayanti last year and positioned itself as a centrist outfit. According to his friends, he set the bar for himself: if you are to the right of centre, you must disapprove the assaults on minorities, and conversely, if you lean towards the left, you don’t have to justify everything that the communists do.

The JSP emerged from the Jan Suraaj Abhiyan, a campaign Kishor devised to engage with the people of Bihar and develop a governance template for the state. He believes this is the only feasible counter to the NDA/BJP’s emotion-laden Hindutva agenda and the saffron party’s unmatched financial as well as organisational strength.

Kishor’s alternative to the Modi brand of politics envisages playing up Bihar’s regional identity and its developmental aspirations and minimising the state’s dependence on the Centre to grow and prosper. This agenda has laid the foundation of the JSP’s consistent pitch to create more jobs in Bihar, stem migration and discard the unwanted label of being a basket case — themes that Kishor says arose out of Delhi’s ‘apathy’ towards Patna for decades.

While the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan (MGB) is embroiled in Rahul Gandhi’s preoccupation with ‘fudged’ electoral rolls and the Election Commission’s alleged omissions and commissions to the detriment of state-specific issues, Kishor is focusing on the plight of Bihar. He says the state continues to be blighted by corruption and criminalisation of politics. He has picked on three BJP leaders as symbols of all that went wrong under the NDA: state party president Dilip Jaiswal and ministers Samrat Choudhary and Mangal Pandey.

There is an inclination to get excited over a newbie in the political arena (though Kishor is not a stranger to Bihar, thanks to his former association with Nitish and the JD-U), but is that good enough to win one’s spurs? As the founder of his consultancy firm Indian Political Action Committee, Kishor circumscribed his role as a political consultant acting like a “force multiplier” to help a party win an election. As the proprietor of a party, he has his task cut out for him.

Kishor’s first test, albeit a small one, was in the November 2024 bypolls to four Assembly seats. The NDA swept these seats, wresting three from the RJD. Two JSP candidates finished third, while another ended up fourth. Kishor drew comfort from the fact that his party’s vote share averaged 10 per cent in the constituencies which his padyatra had not yet covered.

The JSP was accused of being a “vote katua” (vote cutter) — a politically incorrect label in Bihar — of the RJD. Kishor predictably repudiated the charge, maintaining that the Opposition had to blame itself for not standing up to the NDA.

Nonetheless, analysts and bookies are hard at work, speculating on whose votes the JSP will eat into. In recent weeks, Kishor has inundated social media with interviews in which he has studiously attacked the BJP, then Nitish and ignored the MGB. His pitch on governance, development and infrastructure, bereft of caste-specific appeals, suggested that his target audience was the upper castes which can create the right atmosphere for the party but not bring in substantial votes. Unlike UP, in ‘Mandalised’ Bihar, the savarnas cannot tilt the caste equations in most constituencies.

Is Kishor’s growing visibility a forewarning to the NDA since the BJP holds the upper castes in thrall? Given how caste is deeply entrenched in Bihar, parties will be busy reworking the caste arithmetic and doing a cost-benefit analysis as the polling day nears. This, after all, is a state election to retain the incumbent or unseat him. The JSP’s performance will indicate if Bihar is receptive to a third player or prefers to stick to the tried-and-tested binary arrangement.

Radhika Ramaseshan is a senior journalist based in New Delhi, India.