Why poll Houdini Prashant Kishor isn’t a neta

Magic is power by chicanery. Poll prestidigitator Prashant Kishor makes a living out of it.
Election strategist Prashant Kishor (Photo | PTI)
Election strategist Prashant Kishor (Photo | PTI)

Magic is power by chicanery. Poll prestidigitator Prashant Kishor makes a living out of it. The magician on stage is all-powerful to the mesmerised audience, pulling the rabbit out of his hat, sawing pretty ladies in half, making members in the audience disappear and a host of other tricks in his legerdemain. He is, in the duration of his performance, god. It never ceases to amaze me how credulous the most clever, intuitive, paranoid and ruthless politician can be when his or her survival is at stake.

And there is no nemesis greater than an election. Which is where Prashant Kishor and his multi-crore bag of tricks come in. The magic performer’s Achilles heel is believing his magic to be real. Especially when it gives him the pizazz to make his clients believe it. Now that KCR, the boss of TRS and chief minister of Telangana, is buying Kishor’s services, a new show will hit the road soon. Just in time. Mamata Banerjee, who seems to have wised up to the election conjurer’s tricks, could be dumping him and IPAC.

Like in Bihar, where Nitish Kumar sacked him, Kishor will meet the same fate for his hubris. For all his cleverness, he can be quite naive since he believes that he is a politician. Rubbing shoulders with netas and planning strategy doesn’t make one a neta. TMC politicians privately say that Kishor’s politicking within the party, advising Abhijit Banerjee to create a young base for himself without his charismatic aunt’s approval, is what has created the rift.

And embarrassed the nephew. In Bihar, having become a party vice-president, Kishor believed the ethical plank will raise his stature. Ethical strategy is a seasoned politician’s trump card, played with cynical sincerity to save skin. Agreed Kishor has skin in the game, but it isn’t thick enough to make him a leader..
Going for Prashant Kishor is his ability to appropriate mass appeal.

His contribution to the 2014 Narendra Modi election campaign was stellar in its technological innovations and squad discipline, but even in his own egomaniacal moments, he wouldn’t think he brought Modi to power. Perhaps he was hopeful of being given a responsibility in the administration, maybe even a ministerial berth. But Kishor is not Amitabh Kant, Deepak Bagla, Bibek Debroy or Amish. He is just an election notary with an algorithm and a bunch of young PowerPoint enthusiasts with iPads.

Cast aside by the BJP, Kishor was despondently contemplating a vacant future when deliverance came in the shape of the amiable intellectual and former JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP who introduced him to Nitish Kumar who desperately needed a win. And Kishor got into the act, but Nitish won with Lalu in the 2015 Assembly elections. Kishor’s poll voodoo is just that—political kidology. He has been smart enough to dive into poll campaigns of winners and claim the backroom laurels.

A YSRC wave was sweeping Andhra in 2019, in spite of Chandrababu Naidu’s tech-inspired governance. Jagan Reddy’s four-year-long door-to-door padayatra took him to power. Similarly, a DMK tsunami inspired by the soft-spoken reformist MK Stalin had risen in Tamil Nadu. Kishor’s reputation as a poll strategist rode piggyback and landed him in the clover. Being a hard realist, he had dropped out of the Congress campaign in UP and recently in Punjab. In Odisha, the BJD turned down his over Rs 140 crore offer because Naveen Patnaik didn’t need IPAC for a convincing victory. Trying to create a Mahagathbandhan luncheon front with Sharad Pawar was part of the Kishorean delusion of being the anti-BJP Opposition glue.

Prashant Kishor needs to come down to earth from his lofty perch of election esoterica and act like the politician he wishes to be. Or else he should stick to his post-Bengal promise to “quit this space” (election management). It is painful to see the pearls of his predictions viewed as thaumaturgy. But then that’s what magicians are about until their audience finds out. Selling tickets by distributing tickets is PK’s ticket to a multi-million payout.

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