The word ‘mercenary’ may perhaps sound a bit too harsh. But, thanks to the kind of work that Prashant Kishor had done as a strategist in many states and especially his latest unsolicited intrusion into Andhra Pradesh politics, there can’t be a better description of a man who shows scant respect for basic ethics. A self-confessed former strategist, Prashant Kishor is wading into this southern state’s politics every now and then, only to make outlandish prophecies to downsize YS Jaganmohan Reddy and, in the process, covertly create some fictitious hype for Chandrababu Naidu.
PK, as he is popularly known, once again caused flutters by predicting YS Jagan’s defeat in the upcoming elections. His refrain is that Jagan’s welfare agenda will end up upsetting the YSRCP applecart. This is the second such statement in recent weeks by the I-PAC founder. Interestingly, he is not basing his predictions any more on ground-level surveys or exercises to gauge the fluctuating public sentiment. And he openly confesses to it. Yet, he has the gumption to foresee the fall of a regime that revelled in grounding a host of welfare schemes with remarkable success, like no other state government in Indian history.
Against the backdrop of PK’s latest prognosis, let’s take a look at the major chinks in his argument.
PK mum on who else will win
Prashant Kishor shouting from the rooftop in the recent past against YS Jagan has quickly sparked suspicions that he is simply parroting lines from Chandrababu Naidu’s script. As if to buttress this, he has made his startling claims only after a couple of his recent meetings with the TDP chief.
It is a no brainer that YS Jagan, on one side, and Chandrababu Naidu, leading the alliance pack on the other, are the only two main contenders for power in Andhra Pradesh. If PK is confident of the YSRCP chief’s defeat this time around, why is he not able to muster enough courage and say emphatically that Chandrababu Naidu’s alliance would dethrone Jagan? Only PK can solve this puzzle if ever he is ready to speak up on this.
Soon after his first closed-door meeting with Chandrababu Naidu at the latter’s Undavalli residence a few months ago, Prashant Kishor sought to distance himself from predicting a winner for Andhra Pradesh. He said that he was no more involved in either strategizing for any party or can speak on the strength of any ground-level surveys. But he changed his tack a few weeks later to foresee doom befalling on YS Jagan. This led to the perception that PK was merely roped in by the TDP chief, among many election-time forces, to systematically contrive a false narrative and inject it into the public before the poll time.
PK singles out YS Jagan’s welfare basket but excludes similar states
An unduly heavy reliance on welfare regime without any substantial development has been the main roose for Prashant Kishor’s soothsaying against YS Jagan. He claims that the YSRCP chief will pay the price for pursuing only welfare sans development, just like the Congress party in Chhattisgarh which was defeated in the recent Assembly elections.
Looks like the erstwhile political strategist was either underestimating public memory or was brazenly contradicting himself here. Not so long ago, it was the same PK who predicted the grand victory of the Congress party in Chhattisgarh, based on its welfare governance. But he ended up with an egg on his face as the BJP ousted the grand-old party to return to power in this state. This instantly begs the question on the accuracy of Prashant Kishor’s electoral predictions in the last few years. Let’s hold our horses on that for now and focus on all the states that came to power using welfare as their potent weapon.
TMC founder Mamata Banerjee has been smartly leveraging the welfare agenda to her party’s advantage in West Bengal elections. She is able to implement schemes that are largely beneficial to her core target groups of the electorate. Congress returned to power in both Karnataka and Telangana, largely on the back of its poll promises on populist welfare measures. This effectively seals the debate that Prashant Kishor needs no one else to debunk his viewpoint on the welfare regime in Andhra Pradesh.
Chandrababu too is copying Jagan’s welfare plans
There is another major hole in Prashant Kishor’s advocacy against YS Jagan that smacks off prejudice, and with no political prudence. Chandrababu Naidu, his alleged newest ‘client’, kept lampooning YS Jagan’s ‘Navaratnalu’ and other welfare schemes over the last four years. He even accused his rival of plunging the state into a deep debt crisis and turning Andhra Pradesh into another Sri Lanka. But, ever since the election fever has caught up in the state, the leader of opposition has been flaunting his own ‘Super 6’, a concoction of populist promises copied from the agenda of both YS Jagan and the Congress party in Karnataka.
He bizarrely claimed that he would sustain his welfare schemes by ‘creating wealth’ in the state and instantly became a laughing stock in public. He was ridiculed in the political realm and heavily trolled on social media platforms for promising moon after failing miserably during his 14-year stint as the chief minister. It is anybody’s guess that the wealth of a state cannot be merely created with a magic wand. It calls for sustained efforts aimed at development through expansion of industries while augmenting other revenue-generating avenues.
Even if Chandrababu sincerely practises what he is preaching, it will take many decades to achieve half of this and involves costs that will be colossal for any state government. The state will begin to get its revenue in the form of taxes only after the industries are able to withstand the vagaries of time and geo-political upheavals. The TDP chief has no qualms in compressing such a complex maze of hypothetical likelihoods into a grand fantasy, all aimed to trick the electorate to vote in his party’s favour. Prashant Kishor seems to have completely glossed over this prospective scenario as it does not suit his narrative.
List of PK’s predictions that went horribly wrong
Finally, it brings us to the question of Prashant Kishor’s accuracy in predicting election results in various states in the recent past. The I-PAC founder, with no current connections with the consulting group, is strikingly similar to Chandrababu Naidu in one particular aspect. Both have been the biggest beneficiaries of excessively artificial hype with no real success on the ground.
Let’s take a quick look at the states where Prashant Kishor’s prediction magic failed to work.
In 2022, he famously punted on the Bharatiya Janata Party coming to power in Himachal Pradesh on the ground that the state has 95 percent of Hindus, like nowhere else in the country. But the electorate voted for the Congress which wrested power with a majority of more than 60 percent in the Assembly elections.
He goofed up big time in Karnataka last year when he claimed that the BJP would retain power there despite a strong anti-incumbency factor. The Congress staged a stunning comeback by winning 135 out of the total 224 Assembly seats. The BJP was reduced to only 66 seats.
In Chhattisgarh Assembly elections last year, Prashant Kishor betted big time on the Congress, saying that the grand-old party would win its second successive term. The results however proved that PK’s assessment was not in sync with the ground scenario. With a popular mandate, the BJP came back to power there.
Even in Telangana too, Prashant Kishor gave the top billing to Bharata Rashtra Samithi (BRS) to retain the power for a third successive term. His predictions came after his meeting with BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR). He was even said to have proactively worked for the party in designing its campaign strategies across the state. However, it was the Congress that had the last laugh and proved for the umpteenth time that Prashant Kishor is past his time in his favourite game..!