Three years of hard work hasn't paid well for strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor, whose Jan Suraaj Party failed to convert his passionate "warnings" and "convincing" arguments into votes. Kishor had urged Bihar to break free from age-old caste alliances, and emotionally rooted political loyalties and instead choose an intellectually driven people’s movement for development and change. But the electorate did not buy into his pitch. His poll plank centred on challenging the political image of BJP-JDU leaders, and disrupting both traditional caste loyalties and the opposition’s Muslim-Yadav vote bank, but this ultimately fell flat.
Because one thing that seemed to have quickly changed the direction of elections, claim Kishor loyalists, is cash doles plotted by the ruling NDA and announced a few days before the Model Code of Conduct, making it the primary driving force for many.
Though Kishor’s electoral loss was a done deal, the Jan Suraaj leaders did not expect a vote of less than 5 per cent. But the party stopped at just 3.40 per cent. This makes it tougher for Kishor to pin the entire blame of his loss on a momentary pro-incumbency triggered by short-term incentives that eventually pushed his third front to the bottom. In fact, deputy chief minister Samrat Chaudhary from BJP, whom Kishor had accused of murder and other academic irregularities, also won by a margin of more than 45,000 votes.
Political strategists explain that Kishor’s narrative, cadre base and candidates appeared too little to the electorate to be voted for. What impacted Kishor the most was the new inexperienced local network of workers on the ground and immature leaders who were given tickets. They could neither campaign well nor could make people believe that they are potential winners. His key promise of making Bihar immigration-free and its people self-sufficient also did not resonate well in the state, where more than 10 million out of 130 million population work outside the state.
The only supporters left to vote for Kishor were those who could directly connect with his reason and understand the future needs of making Bihar a better place.
"In Bihar, more than half the population lives hand-to-mouth, unable to save even a few hundred rupees a month. They want to save but their earnings are so meagre that survival consumes everything. So when the government announced Rs 10,000 cash doles to 15 million women, almost everyone was upbeat about it, hoping that a thick amount would enter their bank accounts," says ETG Research senior political analyst Madan Mohan Jha.
He adds, "With that extra money, they could finally buy the things they had postponed for long. Therefore, immediate relief was more real than Kishor's distant promises, as they seemed a long wait and a risky bet compared to an instant, lump-sum deposit. And therefore those few who were rooting for him also changed their direction."
Not only Kishor, even the Mahagathbandhan's existence was smashed down to a distant second, leading it to wrap up its tally at 35 seats out of 243 assembly segments.
Kishor may be a distant third with his thin cadre strength. But despite the big political war between the NDA and Mahagathbandhan's grassroots soldiers, he managed to secure the third place in more than 130 assembly constituencies. This shows he has laid down his foundation in more seats than the state's half-way mark of the total constituencies. It also indicated the key constituencies where Jan Suraaj can focus on in the future.
As the assessment of Mahagathbandhan's loss shows, an unending fear of "jungle raj" jitters people away from RJD. Also, the existing anti-incumbency factor against the ruling NDA is not expected to go away easily. Experts see a shifting power centre in Bihar, from Nitish to someone who can replace him in the coming years. This is where Kishor could be seen as an emerging potential face.
He has already proven himself a solid opposition leader who can articulate concerning issues of the state and make people understand the flaws of government. Notably, several of the opposition's rebuttals to the NDA narrative during the elections were manufactured by him initially and later on picked up by the main opposition leaders from RJD and Congress.
He deliberately avoided focusing on any particular seat in order to prevent early power centres from emerging. This is a sharp turnaround from the AIMIM strategy of concentrating its manpower in a few designated areas and winning a bunch of seats, which may not have worked well for Kishor.
Victory in a few seats could have made those legislators easy targets for poaching, a trend being anchored by the ruling camp for the past several years. This was something Kishor has talked about earlier multiple times. He has been clear he doesn’t want just five or 10 MLAs but a mandate that cannot be bought or broken.
What also hurts the party leaders is that they expected to do much better than the aggregate vote share they secured. They think that they were not able to build enough trust as the relationship they had developed among target audiences shifted almost at the last minute.
"The most heartbreaking result of this election is that Bihar missed a chance to break free from the cycle of nonsensical and appeasement politics, a level never seen before. They have not only emptied the treasury but presumably borrowed huge amount just to buy votes. What we witnessed was not welfare, but a vote-buying mechanism in full play," Uday Singh, National President of Jan Suraaj told The Week.
He added, "The apparent absence of Muslims in our visible support base worked against us. Because we couldn’t demonstrate that all communities were with us, therefore the non-Muslim voters chose to play safe and side with the NDA, fearing that any split could bring the RJD back."
The 2025 Bihar elections may not have given Kishor seats, but it has marked his arrival as a political player. And with the RJD cut to size, Kishor may now be looking to carving out space for Jan Suraaj to build its relevance first, before seeking resonance among the electorate. |
