Analyst in Search of a Political Party

Nothing displays the decline of ideology in Indian politics more than the way Prashant Kishor is now searching for a political base. Prashant Kishor and his outfit have been responsible for guiding the election campaigns of a number of political parties in the past decade. The political parties have been of a variety of hues, ranging from the extreme right to left and caste based regional outfits.

His biggest success so far has been the BJP’s campaign for the 2014 elections, which ended a decade of Congress led rule at the Centre and brought the BJP to power with an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. His latest major success was in West Bengal, when his outfit helped Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress to beat back a determined challenge from the BJP.

After working with a number of regional parties, Prashant Kishor has been looking for a national party to associate with. Keeping this in view, he mounted two major moves in the last half year or so to hitch up a partnership with the Congress. Media reports say the talks progressed quite a lot but floundered because of over-ambitiousness of the political analyst. Without subscribing to the political ideology of the Congress, he wanted to be formally anointed as virtual number two in the party, just behind the Gandhis. This would have enabled Prashant Kishor to take over the country’s oldest political party in course of time.

There are reports that after failing to have his way with the Congress, Prashant Kishor is trying for a similar deal with the Janata Dal United. But this of course will need a much longer and tougher battle to achieve success. What is astounding is that without subscribing to a political party’s ideology, Prashant Kishor has been trying to virtually take over and emerge numero uno. Truly, ideology no longer matters in the emerging modern India. A sad day for Indian democracy.