Opinion Prashant Kishor’s holier-than-thou politics has a challenge — and an opportunity
The real question that these elections will answer is not if PK will be a main player in the state but whether, post-Bihar, he can strive to be a significant player outside Bihar
The task is not easy. PK's political promiscuity in his earlier avatar can always make his politics suspect or a channel to join the BJP. (PTI Photo) 
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In Bihar’s electoral contest this time, the future of the new entrant, Prashant Kishor’s (PK) Jan Suraaj Party, is being talked about. An unknown, untested player often generates more curiosity. Disproportionate interest in its performance can also be due to its holier-than-thou attitude in keeping its distance from Bihar’s two main political blocs.
In the past four decades, roughly from the emergence of the Telugu Desam Party in 1983, not many parties have breached the threshold dramatically or even gradually. The Asom Gana Parishad did capture power in Assam’s 1985 election, but that was mainly in the backdrop of the bitter and popular movement in the state over an evocative issue. The BSP took almost a quarter of a century to win Uttar Pradesh on its own, while more recently, the AAP rode on the combination of media hype, anti-incumbency and urban middle-class sensibilities. Parties that easily cross the threshold are either so-called dynastic parties, breakaway factions of established forces (such as the Trinamool Congress, Biju Janata Dal or Nationalist Congress Party). Notably, most “new” forces appeared only during the twilight period of the dominant party or after its decline.
In Bihar, most new entrants have always been legatees of the Janata family of parties or claimants to the “Mandal” heritage. PK brings to the political menu a new offering that does not emerge from these legacies. He has so far also deftly avoided any specific response to the Hindutva arguments of the BJP. One could argue that his party continues to grope for a suitable political platform outside of these two ideological nodes — and that is where he faces a challenge. But that is also where his opportunities lie.
The social-justice ideology has practically run its course in Bihar. On the other hand, even after 10 years of national prominence, Bihar seems elusive for Hindutva. The current rant about ghuspaithiyas is testimony to the fact that the BJP has to invent new stories of victimhood. The ideological bankruptcy of the social-justice ideology and the inadequacy of Hindutva — a combination of homogenising Hindu identity and an anti-minority plank – have produced an ideological vacuum. Whether PK’s party (at least so far, it is the political initiative of one leader) can make any ideological claims to fill this vacuum is a crucial question. Or, rather, his ideological equivocations and the talk of governance may work as an asset for a politics that avoids current ideological tropes.
This, in a sense, connects to the other challenge. The second set of challenges he faces is to breach supposedly “established” social bases of Bihar’s political parties. These are often talked of in caste-community terms. As election data of the past 10 years show, it is too simplistic to imagine solid vote blocs behind any of the political forces. First, the social-justice bloc has long faced a crisis of double credibility — it does not deliver much, and if it does, the lower sections among the backward castes rarely receive much. Second, the BJP does not seem to have much to offer in response to the social-justice expectations of the state’s voters, and whenever it has shared power, it does not seem to have offered much by way of governance. Third, the BJP will have to craft a social alliance not merely of the forward and the most backward castes on the Hindutva platform, but also stitch together a more complicated electoral support comprising the aspirational and impoverished sections — both across castes and having almost contradictory expectations from the state apparatus. These factors mean, as has been previously described by observers of Bihar politics, a “casteplus” or “Hindutva-plus” approach to winning electoral support is necessary. That, again, is where opportunities exist for the new party.
All this is not to say that PK is set to stage a dramatic entry in Bihar’s politics on November 14. The foregoing only maps the spaces that the Jan Suraaj Party may have identified for itself to occupy. The real question that these elections will answer is not if PK will be a main player in the state but whether, post-Bihar, he can strive to be a significant player outside Bihar.
The scenario of party competition in India more or less revolves around the two “all-India” parties and several state parties. In the case of state parties, too, the space for new parties is limited and tenuous historically. But once they are entrenched, they acquire resilience toward the vagaries of competition between the all-India parties. In fact, the major challenge for the BJP so far has been to tame the state parties and occupy their space.
But two other types of parties exist and may become vital in shaping party competition. One is the localised, individual-centred and caste-based “small” parties — a phenomenon that the dominant party doesn’t mind, or, in fact, uses to its advantage. The other is parties that have an ambition to expand beyond one state. AAP has shown that this is possible. Before AAP, the BSP came very close to becoming a strong multi-state party, but then lost steam. Now, the Jan Suraaj Party, if it makes a good showing in Bihar, may attempt to become a multi-state party. Given his contacts and resources, expanding beyond Bihar might not be a problem for PK.
That is where the ideological ambiguities and an open-ended approach to the voter base in Bihar may be an asset. Not being committed to any state-specific social group and not encumbered by any specific ideological package may allow Jan Suraaj to pitch itself as a multi-state party — provided it survives its Bihar test. There is a critical presence of young aspirants to enter politics who are easily convinced by a non-ideological rhetoric of governance. AAP failed them. Like PK’s I-PAC, will Jan Suraaj attract them?
The task is not easy. PK’s political promiscuity in his earlier avatar can always make his politics suspect or a channel to join the BJP. Besides, in times when politics revolves around a single dominant pole, if the Jan Suraaj continues to avoid taking sides, its politics can easily be reduced to irrelevance, while taking sides will quickly subsume it into pre-existing frames of competition.
The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science
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