Since 2022, Prashant Kishor has been on a statewide padyatra, spending over 30 months crisscrossing Bihar’s villages. He claims this exercise has given him a deep understanding of the people’s mood. Under his leadership, Jan Suraaj has prepared “vision documents” for over 8,000 gram panchayats, promising village-specific schemes for industrial development, agriculture and education. Among his most ambitious promises is the plan to build two Netarhat-style schools in every panchayat to counter the dominance of elite English-medium institutions. He also advocates cash-crop cultivation in the off-seasons to boost rural incomes.
Yet, despite his organisational claims―over one crore people enrolled―Jan Suraaj failed to make an impact in its first electoral test. In four assembly constituencies of Shahabad and Magadh regions, all its candidates lost their deposits. The party has also seen internal churn: Anand Mishra, a young IPS officer, from the Assam cadre, who took voluntary retirement to join Jan Suraaj, quit on May 21, citing lack of recognition. Two former MPs―Devendra Prasad Yadav and Monazir Hassan―exited after brief stints.
Kishor had named former Purnia MP Uday Singh as national president and retired diplomat Manoj Bharti as state president, but key decisions―from strategy to candidate selection―remain tightly controlled by Kishor, who travels in a fully equipped, air-conditioned vanity van and presides over all programmes personally.
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Kishor has already finalised a panel of four prospective candidates for each of Bihar’s 243 assembly constituencies. On the campaign trail, he targets the RJD and the Lalu Prasad family, appealing to voters to rise above caste loyalties. “At least in this election, forget your caste identity,” he says, invoking the spirit of Jayaprakash Narayan’s ‘Total Revolution’ in the 1970s.
But Kishor is neither JP nor Arvind Kejriwal, the latter having emerged from Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign. While Kishor brings considerable resources and rhetorical skill, and has generated curiosity and hope among Bihar’s youth, the state remains deeply segmented―not just by caste, but by sub-castes as well. And these divisions tend to sharpen, not blur, during elections.
Despite his ambitious vision and outreach, Kishor’s real influence may be limited to constituencies where the margin of victory is exceptionally narrow―less than 1,000 votes. That number, by current estimates, stands at around 22 seats. Whether Kishor emerges as a maker of Bihar’s new politics―or remains a marker of aspirational disruption―is to be seen.
The writer is a Patna-based journalist.