Political Pundit Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj
Despite Flaws, Prashant Kishor’s Party May Sway Voters of Bihar
After pitching camps in nearly 70 percent of Bihar during the past two years with the mission of raising people’s awareness, Prashant Kishor (b.1977), a former public health data-analyst at the United Nations and activist, is scheduled to launch his political party, Jan Suraaj (People’s Good Governance), on 2 Oct 2024, the 155th birth-anniversary of Mohandas K Gandhi.
Prashant has a startling resume that listed his experience as a successful former founder of a consulting company that did data analysis and extended professional help in crafting political-electoral strategies to politicians regardless of their ideologies or party-affiliation. His name, therefore, is associated with the success or failure of personalities as varied as Narendra Modi (Gujarat), Priyanka Gandhi (U.P), Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi), Capt Amrinder Singh (Punjab), M.K.Stalin (Tamil Nadu), Chandrababu Naidu or Y.S.Jagan Reddy (Andhra Pradesh), Mamta Banerjee (West Bengal) or Nitish Kumar (Bihar).
Married to an Assamese physician, Prashant is a native of Bihar where his father was a medical doctor. They belonged to a well-to-do upper caste – middle class Brahmin family (although Prashant says his grandfather was poor who rode bullock cart).
In Bihar, as is well-known by now, the Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, is a member of the Other Backward Community and a principal architect of a coalition between the non-Yadav OBCs and the Extremely Backward Castes that trumped Lalu Yadav’s formidable Muslim-Yadav joint-front in 2005 and 2010. Around mid-2010’s, Nitish had appointed Prashant as a close adviser with his lodge in the Chief Minister’s residence. Bypassing all party rules or ethics, Nitish had installed Prashant as the national Vice President of his party over the head of many senior leaders reportedly at the behest of Amit Shah, a former national president of the BJP and the Home Minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet. Later, when Nitish and Prashant parted company because of policy differences, Nitish is reported to have said that Prashant wanted him to merge his JD(U) with the Congress.
Prashant’s detailed interviews reveal flaws
Prashant Kishor’s ideas became clearer and more crystallized as he went on giving lengthy interviews. People got to know his mind on so many issues that would be incorporated in the party (Jan Suraaj) documents.
Let’s pick up one segment of his many dialogues that were on Caste. Prashant maintained that it was one thing to understand the reality of caste in Bihar and do justice with it, and quite another to do politics over the issue of inequality among the castes. Prashant was basically regurgitating the same hackneyed phrase of “Social Justice” without naming it that the guile politicians like Lalu and Nitish have been cashing in to grab and retain power.
Prashant first created a wave in his own circle when he declared that the President of the newly launched party would be from the most deprived social class (that is either from the EBCs or the SC/ST) of Bihar. Elaborating on that he said the same principle of giving representation to the weaker sections would be followed while recruiting in the FOUR areas of the Jan Suraaj party. Those four areas were in the determination of: (i) the founders of the party, (ii) the party operatives, functionaries or office-bearers, (iii) the party leadership, (iv) the recipients of party tickets and (v) party nominations.
It was not clear how Prashant’s party would implement this caste-based distribution formula in a province of roughly 140 million people that had the following complicated break-up:
Extremely Backward Castes: 36%; Other Backward Castes: 27.12%; SC/ST: 21.33% (19.65 + 1.68); Muslims: 16.87%; General (upper castes): 10%; Christians + Budhists + Sikhs + Jains: 0.154%.
Prashant said the same formula would be applied while fixing quota in the government jobs too. Did he not know that the best in all those functional categories could come from a tiny minority who constituted less than one percent of the population? Being the founder, mover or shaker of his own ambitious political campaign, he himself came from the Brahmin caste that is a paltry 3% of Bihar’s population.
On Prashant’s new party launch and its agenda
Prashant says the tenure of the Chief of his political party would be limited to only one year. In reality and in all honesty, the presidency of a political party for mere 360 days, is too short. The leader can barely show his/her influence on the party. One legislative election cycle for either the center or the state should be ideal (that means 3 to 5 years) during which the president of the party can highlight some results. However, on account of serious lapses, his or her services could be withdrawn or terminated with a 2/3rd vote of the party Working Committee or by a larger convention.
Once again, the declaration that the party leadership should essentially be given to a member of what is called “economically, socially and educationally” backward is like calling for a replay on the favorite turf of Lalu or Nitish.
Bihar had suffered immensely since the V.P.Singh government, after the fall of Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership at the center, revived the Mandal Commission Report and his followers like Mulayam Yadav, Lalu Yadav or Nitish Kumar reaped the political benefits in the states.The same slogan, Jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari (participation or rights based on the number in population) is now being repeated by Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader of the opposition in the present parliament.
Prashant seemed to act upon the same regressive formula that would send the state or the nation further back by many years as it would greatly undermine the qualities of vision, leadership, qualification, dynamism or patriotism (all rolled into one) called Merit. Prashant must know it didn’t matter to his generation whether this kind of leadership came from a member of the EBCs, Dalits, OBCs, the upper castes or from any other social group.
Prashant’s role in his party
Prashant has declared repeatedly that he would neither be the chief of his party nor would he head its legislative group in the Vidhan Sabha to become the Chief Minister even in the event of the Jan Suraaj winning a majority at the next 2025 election. However, if mandated by the party, he said, he would be obligated to contest a Vidhan Sabha seat even if it happened to be Raghopur, the constituency of Lalu Yadav’s son, Tejaswi Yadav, the anointed claimant for the next Chief Minister’s position.
Despite sounding like Gandhi or Kejriwal at the same time, the reality is, Prashant’s word would be final in any party or policy matter. He must be knowing that blood-feud between individuals or social bickerings among factions in Bihar political parties did not follow the (democratic) majority principles; the constitutional proprieties are sacrificed easily at the drop of a hat. Bihar needed a political culture and discipline that would honor and respect wise majority or consensus decisions. For a variety of reasons, Bihar currently doesn’t have that culture or discipline.
If Prashant thinks, by undertaking marches through villages, he has transformed the culture of decay in personal ethics, morality and conduct of those who mattered in cities or villages of Bihar, he has possibly overestimated his accomplishments. It is one thing to raise awareness of the issues of out-migration, absence of proper education, maladministration or ill health care system in Bihar; but, it’s quite another to bring about a systemic reform on the strength of people’s socio-political culture. It’s true eventually any real change will have to come in Bihar only with a transformation in men and women, it will nevertheless take many election cycles and long sustained effort to cleanse the filth Bihar is in.
Prashant has been evasive on certain issues
Until recently, Prashant wasn’t specific or clear on the question of how he was financing his attractive marches, camping, feasting or meetings. He seemed to have a generic answer, “Those who were helped by me free of charge in the past are now helping me or our efforts.” Those so-called helpers are, however, none other than established politicians, rich business people and political parties who have unaccounted money stacked somewhere. Prashant must be aware that any expense on public events must be subject to public audit. The donors also had to declare the sources of their contribution. This was a serious question of transparency in public life.
In the 1970’s, during the JP movement in Bihar, Indira Gandhi, the target of the movement, had once tried to scold and discredit JP on his association with numerous voluntary and charity organizations. She had commented that those who ran organizations on donations given by others had no moral right to “speak against the use of black money in politics.” JP, in his public addresses, invited Indira Gandhi or any of her government institutions to audit the accounts of all the voluntary organizations headed by him.
However, all said and done, Kishore does have the potential to become a factor in Bihar politics.
[Originally from Darbhanga, Bihar (India), Dr Binoy Shanker Prasad lives in Dundas, Ontario (Canada). He is a former UGC teacher fellow at JNU in India and a Fulbright Scholar in the USA. Author of scholarly works including a book, “Violence Against Minorities”, “Gandhi in the Age of Globalization” (a monograph) and a collection of poems”, Dr Prasad has taught at Ryerson University, Centennial College and McMaster University. He has also been the president of Hamilton based India-Canada Society (2006-08 and 2018-20)]
