Jitin Prasada must be feeling reasonably chuffed. He's had a relaunch that a million dollar advertising blitzkrieg could not have given him. Nor even years of ground work. All courtesy TV news channels and the commentariat that went on an overdrive to showcase the BJP's new 'prized catch'. Never mind if it was only Piyush Goyal who did the honours of welcoming Jitin to the saffron fold.
Thanks to the brouhaha that followed, Jitin is now the most prominent Brahmin face of UP politics, which may just about revive his nosediving career and renew his brand equity. As a Congress politician from UP, he could never have got the footage he consumed in the last two days. But make no mistake, half of Jitin's political capital is derived from his past positioning as a Congress dynast, as an elite new-gen 'leader' with a privileged life and education - and most of all, proximity to the prince-in-waiting.
In fact, that's the reason why he became the day's big breaking news - or why he had become the youngest minister in UPA-I all those years ago, almost as soon as he had won the Lok Sabha seat from his home turf of Shahjahanpur in UP in 2004. He didn't even have to wait for his turn to come, like many others who were not part of Rahul Gandhi's close circle had to.
However, Jitin, the pleasant and 'nice guy', is no Jyotiraditya Scindia, with an influence base and enough MLAs to pull down a government. Nor has he shown any fire in the belly to fight it out in the dust of state politics, like a Sachin Pilot. Jitin's is a safe bet politics, and the stakes he's trying to safeguard by switching camps are built around that.
"It was not easy… it was a hard decision, given my family's three-generation-long association with the Congress," is how he puts it. Well, it wasn't such a hard decision either, one for which he may have spent the last week in tormented cogitation. He has in fact been trying to do this for the last two years. His previous attempt was thwarted by none other than Rahul himself. (Though there's another version which says it was Jyotiraditya who had persuaded him to stay back, on Priyanka's bidding!)
Now, the rumour is he has been on the BJP's waiting list for the past six months. Waiting for the right time to strike. And this time, he neither informed the Gandhis nor consulted his G-23 (now 22) seniors. He just took the plunge. The simple reason being, he saw no future for the Congress in UP politics and therefore for himself. The choice was between oblivion and self-revival. Not between ideology and power, as is all-too-easily posited. If he's inducted into the Yogi Adityanath government via the MLC route, it would be an add-on. That would be an additional badge as he seeks to contest or campaign in the next elections, eight months away, as the BJP's newly minted Brahmin face.
Jitin's quite comfortable ploughing the Prasada family legacy, for whatever it is worth now, in the Terai region of the vast state of UP - his father Jitendra Prasada had been felled by the Congress palace when he once, in a rare fit of ambition, dared to contest against Sonia Gandhi for the party president's post! Nor has he any qualms about peddling his privileged caste for political benefits. His babalog politics doesn't represent any new idea. Even while he was in the Congress, he had fallen back on his caste as his last bit of currency - doing yatras, video conferences and listening to grievances from poorer Brahmins, especially the youth, who were not finding enough space in Yogi's "Thakur raj".
His caste and legacy will now come of use within the BJP's own fluid power matrix. But they were not good enough to ensure any political longevity via the Congress, which has little brand value in UP politics. Jitin, it seems, was quite demoralised after having lost his deposit in the last Lok Sabha election from Dhaurahra, and blamed Rahul and Priyanka for it. The Congress had put up two minority candidates in the adjoining Sitapur and Lakhimpur Kheri constituencies, which Jitin felt polarised votes in favour of the BJP's Kurmi candidate, Rekha Verma. The Congress, which has a penchant for creating trouble for itself (like it's doing in Punjab now), did not make things any easier for Jitin thereafter. First, they made a person openly hostile to him the district president. And then sent him off to Bengal to add another humiliating loss for the party on his CV.
But why did the BJP need a Jitin Prasada, a Doon school-SRCC byproduct, a perfumed Brahmin face from the Congress with little mass base, to shore up its fortunes in UP? Is Modi, Yogi and Mandir falling short? The sheer onslaught of the Covid second wave and Yogi's high-handed way of functioning, it seems, has created a dent in the armour. It has left the BJP karyakarta demoralised, MLAs restive and ministers upset. Even its devoted vote banks are not too happy, as central fact-finders found to their dismay. The excess of Thakur assertion has also left the Brahmins and other dominant castes feeling cornered. It's a state where no one really has prospered without engineering an alliance with the 'opinion-making class' - whether it's Mayawati or Akhilesh Yadav. Or the Congress of yore or the BJP now. Along with EBC, OBC and Ram, it needs Parasuram to retain the heart of the heartland, without which ruling India could become a dream. If Jitin's tweets are anything to go by, he's aiming to be that unlikely Parasuram.
(The writer can be reached at santwana@newindianexpress.com)