For years, Prashant Kishor was the invisible architect of modern Indian elections — the strategist who helped shape Narendra Modi’s 2014 campaign, rescued Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and sharpened Mamata Banerjee’s fightback in West Bengal. His methods were part science, part sorcery. And, he was the most expensive political strategist in India.
But when he stepped out from behind the curtain and asked voters to back him, the magic evaporated.
Kishor’s experiment, Jan Suraaj, promised a new kind of politics for Bihar — data-led, governance-centred and liberated from the weight of a caste-bound past. He walked across the state for two years, built an impressive on-ground network, and fielded candidates in almost every constituency. The buzz was real, the crowds were large, and the media followed his every move. Yet when votes were counted, Jan Suraaj did not win even a single seat. Bihar, it seemed, preferred the familiar to the fascinating.
Analysts say the failure reflects the deeper grammar of Indian politics: breaking in is far harder than calling the shots from the wings. Since the 1980s, only a handful of new parties have cracked the code — and nearly all of them were born from breakaways, street movements or a moment of mass anger. Kishor had none of those tailwinds. Bihar was relatively calm, and voters were not in the mood for an upheaval.
Experts argue that Jan Suraaj felt more like a carefully engineered political start-up than a movement with emotional voltage. Its padayatra created visibility, but not the raw, organic momentum that powered parties like the AAP or the AGP. And Kishor’s decision not to contest a seat himself left many wondering whether he was offering a genuine alternative or merely testing a theory.
The verdict also underlines a simple truth: attention is not organisation. The party had recognition but no natural social base, no anchor caste bloc or strong urban constituency to fall back on. Most of its candidates were newcomers, untested in Bihar’s bruising political trenches.
Still, analysts believe this may be the first chapter, not the last. If Jan Suraaj keeps at its grassroots work, builds local leadership and avoids fading after defeat, Bihar’s shifting social landscape may yet offer it space. But only if Kishor chooses to lead not as a strategist — but as a politician willing to take risks himself.