Prashant Kishor and Congress: A political mercenary to the party's rescue?

The meeting of election strategist Prashant Kishor with the Gandhi family last week has not gone unnoticed. Held in Rahul Gandhi’s residence with Priyanka Gandhi present, it was joined by Sonia Gandhi through a video link. The meeting with the highest decision-making triumvirate within the Congress party has led to speculation that the Congress first family could soon induct him into the party ranks.

Sources suggest that he could be appointed General Secretary in-charge of election going states, the Youth Congress and of the National Students Union of India (NSUI). He could also be made General Secretary in-charge of coordination – essentially a replacement for Ahmed Patel; or given a key role to be announced by the Congress President at the next All India Congress Committee meeting.

Kishor earned his spurs successfully marketing political leaders. His successful campaigns included “Brand Modi” for Narendra Modi, “Beta Kejriwal (Kejriwal, our son)” for Arvind Kejriwal, “Jaganna’s Navratnalu (Nine welfare schemes of Jagan)” for Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, “Halqe vich Captain (Captain in your neighbourhood)” for Captain (R) Amarinder Singh, “Phir se, Nitishe (Once again, only Nitish)” for Nitish Kumar, “Didi ke bolo (Tell Didi)” for Mamata Banerjee and “Vidiyalai Nokki Stalinin Kural (Stalin’s voice towards the dawn) for M K Stalin. Among his few failures was the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections of 2017 where he was unable to deliver more than 7 seats to his client, the Congress.

Before the Gandhi family think they have landed a big fish they should remember that Nitish Kumar inducted Kishor into the Janata Dal (United) in September 2018. An elated Kumar had described it as a matter of “personal happiness” and appointed him the national Vice President of the party, next only to himself. A Bihari to boot, Kishore was seen as the political successor to an aging Nitish Kumar.

The enchantment did not last for long. In January 2020, Kumar expelled him for “indiscipline” for making public his criticism of the Citizenship Amendment Act. Kishor’s secularist line was inexplicable. He was no babe in the woods, and had consciously boarded a train being pulled along by a Hindutva engine. Once he went ‘rogue’, he was thrown out of the moving train.

Kishor’s success as election strategist has relied on remaining an ideological agnostic – marketing Narendra Modi as the angel of development as easily as promoting his bete noir Mamata Banerjee as an accessible leader. As long as he was paid, he delivered. A Gujarat leader, describing him as “extremely opportunistic and ambitious”, told the Indian Express, “For him it is not about ideology but opportunity.” Now, it seems that he sees joining the Congress party as an opportunity.

His powerful backers inside the Congress include Kamal Nath and Amarinder Singh. His latest move also has the support of other Opposition politicians such as Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and YSR Congress chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. Banerjee is believed to have facilitated Kishor’s meeting with Sharad Pawar as well. It is rumoured that she might support him for a Rajya Sabha seat from West Bengal, should the Congress decide to field him. This formidably broad backing suggests that they expect him to play a key role in facilitating a coalition of the Opposition parties to take on the BJP in 2024.

Having Kishor on board will certainly get the Congress media attention. However, it could impact internal processes in the party. Lateral entrants in politics draw their strength from their closeness to the top leader of the party, allowing them to run roughshod over party institutions.

Ruchi Gupta, former NSUI chief has analysed in a newspaper column how reliance on election managers like Kishor harms political parties: internal feedback mechanisms of the party are bypassed in favour of assessments by politically agnostic individuals external to the party; it undercuts intra-party competition and consolidates power in a single individual; and it undermines the ideological agenda and programmatic vision of the party by building the election campaign around a single individual “who personifies not an ideology but the promise of certain benefits from the State.”

A lateral induction at the top will deepen the institutional problems alluded to in the letter written by 23 Congressmen to the party president. It will neither create the “institutional leadership mechanism” for “effectively guiding” the party nor help in reforming the party structure, decentralising power, and empowering state units, that were highlighted as urgent tasks before the party. Far from increasing accountability in the Congress organisation, the move would step up the whimsicality with which its leaders run the party.

Rahul Gandhi’s latest statements suggest that Congress’ election campaign will not be ideologically neutral. Upping the ideological ante, he has said that those who are scared of fighting the BJP and the RSS should leave the party and “join the RSS.” The induction of someone who has helped propel arch-communalists to power into what promises to be an ideologically sharp battle is therefore contradictory and confusing.

The Congress party will also have to watch out for ideologically neutral and “professional” entrants going rogue. Arun Nehru is a classic example. He was inducted by Indira Gandhi directly from the Jensen and Nicholson group of companies to virtually run the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. He was later inducted as a ‘technocrat’ into Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet.

Nehru accrued so much power from his closeness to the Gandhis that he became an uncontrollable political bully. When he was eventually sacked from his Cabinet by Rajiv Gandhi, he crossed over and joined forces with Gandhi’s bete noire V P Singh over the Bofors issue.

Those not used to party discipline and with unbounded ambition cannot help institutionalise the Congress. They are with the party only till the party serves their appetite for power. Already suffering from a weak institutional structure, the Congress will be further de-institutionalised by bringing in snake oil salesmen offering quick fixes on “How to Win Elections and Influence People”.