Prashant Kishor: The Unreluctant Politician And The Reluctant Contester

When the newest player on the Bihar election scene, Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, offered to “monetise” his YouTube channel, it felt like the world had changed and the doors to success had suddenly opened for Mukesh (name changed), a 28-year-old “YouTuber” who calls himself a “digital warrior”. Like many others, he, too, started posting on his channel videos shared daily by the party via WhatsApp and Telegram. They get Rs 25 for 1,000 views and have to share a video every day. Jan Suraaj Party, which was launched by the former election strategist also known as PK on October 2, 2024, also reimburses their internet expenses (Rs 250-300 per month).

Monetisation, indeed, is often sufficient temptation—once a critical mass of “views” is reached, a decent flow of money follows. “YouTuber” wouldn’t even exist as a vocation otherwise, as this incentive is often key to enabling most people to choose a full-time career in creating social media content. No wonder the Jan Suraaj Party’s assurance of help in increasing the views and monetising their YouTube channels is quite the magnet for many aspiring influencers. The party claims its digital volunteers are active in 2,697 villages across Bihar. Mukesh leads a 25-member team in their block. A year ago, when PK visited their block and spoke to young people about jobs, education and healthcare, Mukesh, who says he has “several degrees but no job”, was impressed and signed up as a digital warrior of the party. “Once our YouTube channel is monetised, the party will stop paying us per view,” Mukesh says.

Rearing digital warriors is not the only experiment in working style that makes PK’s organisation stand apart from parties of the traditional kind. While no other party is really a stranger to the winds of “corporate culture” any more, many observers describe the party as one verily born out of it as it is run with the help of salaried employees.

From Rohtas to Patna via the UNO and Gujarat

PK was born 48 years ago in a household of Konar village in Rohtas district, south Bihar, where he went to school for a few years before moving to the neighbouring Buxar district and then to Hyderabad for an engineering degree. After a stint abroad with a UN health programme, he worked with then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi from 2011-12. Modi’s trust in PK kept growing alongside the rise in his own stature in the BJP. In 2013, the year Modi was named the party’s candidate for prime minister, PK formed Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) with Prateek Jain, Rishiraj Singh and Vinesh Chandel to handle the “marketing” of Modi for the 2014 general elections. Besides tapping the potential of social media, the CAG organised tea discussions, 3D rallies and marathon conferences to create a larger-than-life image of the BJP’s PM candidate.

PK and his CAG partners, many observers claim, were eyeing important responsibilities in the Modi government in lieu of their campaign work—possibly as an advisory committee or think-tank. Singh, in fact, admitted as much after the polls, saying he was waiting to see the options the BJP would offer him. However, the BJP’s top leadership allegedly disregarded this aspiration. Meanwhile, in Bihar, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) had broken its long-standing alliance with the saffron party, miffed with its leadership’s decision to make Modi their PM candidate, and ended up with a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha election. Nitish resigned as CM and appointed Jitan Ram Manjhi in his place. It was at this critical juncture that Nitish came across PK, who was being openly acknowledged for his role in Modi’s victory. The JD(U) supremo thought PK could play a big role in the 2015 Assembly polls and the strategist took charge of the RJD-Congress-JD(U)’s election management. The CAG was rechristened as Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), and much of PK’s work was focused on grooming the image of Nitish and his party. Bollywood lyricist Rajashekhar, a Bihar native, was roped in to compose a jingle—“Bihar mein bahaar ho, Nitishe Kumar ho (Let spring come to Bihar, let there be Nitish Kumar”).

PK never shies away from claiming the Grand Alliance’s victory as his achievement, though detractors attribute it to his “arrogance”. He did become the star of Bihar in 2015, earning Nitish’s trust. He became his advisor and was accommodated in the CM’s residence. Eventually he was appointed vice-president of the JD(U) and began seeing himself as Nitish’s political heir. As JD(U) VP, PK launched the ‘Youth in Politics’ campaign. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, he was removed from the post in 2020 for opposing the party’s stand on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Soon after, during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, PK launched the ‘Baat Bihar ki (Bihar’s Word)’ campaign to connect with “the youth of Bihar who are willing to do positive politics”. He said the youth associated with the campaign would also run for posts of panchayat heads etc in civic polls. Then Congress leader and data analyst Shashwat Gautam, who is now in the RJD, filed a police complaint accusing PK of stealing his idea and logo. Though the case went nowhere, the campaign lost momentum because PK’s focus shifted to West Bengal, where the Trinamool Congress hired his services.

Then, in August 2022, an application was submitted to the Election Commission of India for the registration of the Jan Suraaj Party. It was signed by two Delhi residents as president and general secretary, and a resident of Bihar’s Saran district as treasurer. Two months later, on October 2, PK announced a 3,500-km Jan Suraaj padayatra (foot march) in Bihar to “meet people and listen to their problems”. PK said he would consider founding a new political party if the people so wished as a part of the solutions. A large number of paid recruits were deployed to manage the march as well as form committees at the village, mandal, municipal and district levels. Since the Jan Suraaj Party’s foundation last October, these recruits have been handling a large and important part of the party work.

The march started from Bhitiharwa in West Champaran, where Mahatma Gandhi in 1917 had launched his first non-violent movement in India, against enforced indigo cultivation. More than 100 paid professionals, divided into central team, field team, insight team etc, conducted recces of the route and collected caste-wise data about the local population. “They were also asked to connect Jan Suraaj with the community leaders,” says a former employee who was associated with the campaign. The local leaders covered the expenses of every meeting—Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 for tents, chairs, breakfast etc. Some allege they were pressured by the management teams to make such arrangements, and some others claim they were enticed with the promise of an election ticket. “So far the party has fired at least 10 persons for giving such false assurances,” says a campaigner.

Playing Gandhi & Ambedkar for the Bihari ‘Others’

At the beginning of the padayatra, PK talked about being inspired by Gandhi, whose image was placed at the centre of the Jan Suraaj logo. Suraaj is a nod to Gandhi’s swaraj or self-rule. The campaign, PK said, was “an attempt to revive the Congress, which followed Gandhi’s political ideology before independence”. “Whether you believe in Ambedkar, communism, socialism or Gandhi’s ideology, these four should be brought together so a better alternative could be brought to Bihar,” he said.

In the initial stages of the march, PK used to talk about economic, healthcare and educational distress, unemployment and migration, while being sharply critical of caste-based politics. He soon realised, however, that politics in Bihar could not be done without talking about caste. The logo, then, incorporated an image of Ambedkar, too, alongside Gandhi’s. The Ambedkar Vahini was formed to reach out to Dalits and the (now defunct) Karpoori Vahini, named after former Bihar CM Karpoori Thakur, for the extremely backward. Professionals from these groups were roped in. Meanwhile, at public forums PK started talking about proportional representation and quotas on the basis of numbers. Eventually, he decided to reach out to Muslims, too, and a minority outreach team was formed with students of Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. “We targeted those who had run for panchayat polls, had government jobs or were educated,” says a member of this team. PK vigorously raised the issue of Muslim participation in politics and, particularly, in the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which is known for its Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) consolidation. Educated Muslims, especially, began drifting towards PK’s party, though they also have deep apprehensions about his ideological leanings.

PK’s flawed prediction that the BJP would bag more than 300 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election also caused much resentment among the Muslims. “The RJD, too, left no stone unturned to cast PK as the BJP’s ‘Team B’,” says a young Muslim Jan Suraaj campaigner. “When we went to Muslim neighbourhoods, the residents would get angry on hearing PK’s name.” However, as PK kept harping on the theme of building leadership among Muslims and promoting education, many started looking at Jan Suraaj with hope. However, some remain hesitant.

“PK’s attitude towards ideology has been absolutely sloppy,” says a former Jan Suraaj campaigner. “Like many other politicians, there is a big difference between what he says in public and what he does. For example, he says he won’t become CM, but there is an internal party exercise to make him CM.” A social media team member says they created 10,000 Facebook pages named ‘PK for CM’ at the district, block and panchayat levels, with Jan Suraaj volunteers as admins. PK, who has no official party post, takes all the decisions and leads the pressers, while former Dalit bureaucrat Manoj Bharti, who helmed the party at the time of its inception, has been marginalised. Some say PK’s insistence on bringing educated people into politics could end up alienating those who could not study due to socio-economic reasons. Questioning his ideology, DM Diwakar, the former director of AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, says: “It is ironical that he announced to lift liquor ban in Bihar on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who was against liquor consumption. He also did not realise that lifting the ban would make women voters angry, as the ban was proposed by them.”

An Anticlimax at Gandhi Maidan

Despite all its claims of expertise in election management, the Jan Suraaj Party could not make any mark in the recent bypolls for four assembly seats. In three constituencies, the party candidates lost their deposits. The party also lost the bypoll for a legislative council seat soon after. A disappointed PK postponed a padayatra planned for the districts excluded from the last march. His April 11 Bihar Parivartan Rally at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan, billed as a show of strength and the climax of Jan Suraaj activities since the launch of the padayatra in October 2022, turned out to be a damp squib despite Rs 15-20 crore spent on the arrangements. The crowd was much less than expected and many left even before PK’s arrival at his first Gandhi Maidan meeting. PK entered the stage from the back instead of walking the 500-metre ramp and spoke for just seven minutes, slamming the administration for the low turnout that he blamed on traffic jams. Though he said he would meet everyone at the venue for four-five hours after his speech, not many stayed back except the YouTubers.

Following this anti-climax, PK launched the Bihar Parivartan Yatra in May at Saran district’s Sitab Diara, the birthplace of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan. Meanwhile, he started “exposing” Bihar BJP leaders in the manner of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal.

While PK was earlier expected to run for the Raghopur assembly seat, taking on RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, the Jan Suraaj leader went to Raghopur after poll dates were announced and said he won’t contest, disappointing his supporters and allowing his detractors to claim he was afraid of defeat. PK claimed that if he focused on Raghopur, it would affect the campaign at other places. Meanwhile, he has alleged that the BJP’s top leadership forced three of his candidates to withdraw their nomination. The BJP has denied this.

Political parties do not see Jan Suraaj, a factor in this election. Tejashwi Yadav, the chief minister face of Grand Alliance, told media that He is just a media creation. JD (U) leader Niraj Kumar says that Jan Surraj will not be any formidable force in Bihar. “He talks about migration but his own family lives in Delhi. He talks about education but his children study in private institutes,” he says.

The Jan Suraaj Party claims it targets 30-40 per cent of the voters who vote for neither the NDA nor the Grand Alliance and PK says it would hurt both sides equally. With the polls due on November 6 and 11, PK’s irritation has begun to show—he walked out of an interview with a news channel instead of following his usual style of trying to dominate it.

Umesh Kumar Ray is a Bihar-based independent journalist