Niccolo Machiavelli was a famous philosopher, a political theorist who authored the famous book-The Prince, and a prominent Italian renaissance diplomat. He is known to have quoted once-“Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed”.

Far away from the country of birth of Machiavelli, in India, an oriental country, Machiavellianism is the central inevitable feature of the electoral battles.

In the upcoming state elections in India, like in West Bengal & Tamil Nadu, political parties have their own sets of prophets, with all of them armed with some specific strengths which would be relevant in the context of the election. But, there is one player in all these elections, who is carrying the proverbial magic wand, or so to speak, given the importance of the state elections in Indian federalism, and the background of that person, in terms of his work across elections.

In the season leading upto the first major state election in India, the ruling party in West Bengal has seen many leaders like Suvendu Adhikari, Rajeeb Banerjee & others resigning with most of them joining BJP. This has led to an idea taking shape in the political circles in Kolkata and New Delhi, which is that the election battle in West Bengal is shaping up as a fight between Prashant Kishor and Amit Shah apart from being an ideological tiff between Mamata and Modi.

That decision-making in Trinamool Congress high command has been centralized around Mamata, her nephew Abhishek Banerjee and Prashant Kishor has been a source of disgruntlement and disillusionment among many senior party leaders, is not a secret. This has caused various leaders like Suvendu Adhikari, a prominent erstwhile leader of TMC in East Midnapore, Barrackpore MLA Silbhadra Datta, Coochbehar South MLA Mihir Goswami to get disaffected in TMC-fold and jump the boat into BJP. They have accused that they have been isolated and cut-off from the policy, strategy and decision-making, which have gone into the organizational fort of Prashant Kishor. Leaders close to the high command in TMC have rubbished these allegations as means to make scapegoat out of Prashant Kishor.

Also See: What are the problem areas of TMC and the chances of BJP in this election season in West Bengal

While giving strategic direction to the TMC in the upcoming state election West Bengal, Prashant Kishor had on December 21, last year tweeted that that BJP would struggle to cross double digits in the state election, which had whipped up the political storm in the state and in the national circles of observers of BJP’s approaches to state election. Kishor had also added a note that if BJP defies his prediction, then he would quit. BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya had then commented that India would be a better place with one political analyst less. He had also at one point of time stated that Amit Shah is the principal of the college where Kishor was a student. That had led many to portray the Bengal electoral battle as being a tactical battle between Shah and Kishor apart from being an ideological battle between Modi and Mamata. But the Kishor-BJP oppositional equation goes well beyond the Shah-Kishor countering dynamics.

After having worked in UNICEF’ s Africa unit, Kishor was embedded into the BJP wing, which was campaigning in Gujarat for the assembly election of 2012. It was because of a write-up of Kishor as an UN expert official on the water scarcity situation in Gujarat, that BJP decided to bring him onboard to design the policy & campaign for the party running for the Gujarat polls.

Also See: Would West Bengal election really be a three-way fight after the defections?

Before designing various state election campaigns for various non-BJP parties, Kishor had taken the charge of designing the national campaign for BJP for the 2014 LS polls. As per Pawan Verma, a former adviser to CM of Bihar-Nitish Kumar, Kishor had trained Modi how to deal with uncomfortable questions from journalists, like what happened in 2007, when he (Modi) was interviewed by Karan Thapar. In that interview, which is generally avoided by the BJP-supporters as a blip on pre-2014 political timeline, Karan Thapar’s questions had choked Modi to such an extent that he had to leave the interview.

When Kishor was giving shape to the national campaign for BJP in the 2014 LS election, he had suggested that the new government should build an advisory body, which would bring in experts from the private enterprises to guide the government policies, somewhat similar to what is done in the US. This advice was not heeded by the new government under BJP. (The NITI Aayog is nothing but a rejigged version of Planning commission, which prepares favourable reports for GOI at best.) That led to the fallout of Kishor with the BJP and he left the advisory team. Some say that he had in fact left because of his friction with Amit Shah.

After his departure from BJP-team, he and other members of Citizens for Accountable Governance (founded by him in 2013), which was central in the national election campaign for 2014 polls, reorganized into I-PAC in 2015.

I-PAC or Indian Political Action Committee developed as a professional platform for helping the political parties design their election campaigns. The body has been responsible for victories of many non-BJP parties in state elections, like Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party in Delhi in 2020, Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, Congress in Punjab in 2017, & Nitish Kumar’s Janta Dal (United) in 2015 in Bihar. The only speck of failure on the super-successful portfolio of I-PAC has been the campaign for INC in the UP election of 2017.

Also Read: Presence of Prashant Kishor in the state electoral polities across India

Apart from election campaigns, the I-PAC has been involved in outreach programmes in various states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. According to the DMK, the purpose of ‘Ondrinaivom Vaa’ campaign, conceptualized by I-PAC-TN unit, is “to act as a catalyst to bring together the people of Tamil Nadu”, especially during the Covid19 situation. In West Bengal, TMC rolled out Didir Doot App on February 4. The App is a brainchild of Prashant Kishor, or PK as he is affectionately called in TMC high commands. The app has sections like Didir Sathe Kaj Karun (Work with Didi, work for Bengal), Didir Sathe Jukto Thakun (work together with Didi) and Didir Kotha Janun (Get the most recent information on Didi and her campaigns). TMC led by Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the Didir Doot App has over 1 lakh downloads. The Didir Doot App is known to be giving a tough fight to the Modipara App developed by the BJP IT cell team for West Bengal led by Amit Malviya. Meanwhile, the subaltern vote bank (SC/ST/OBC) in West Bengal, which is being targeted by the saffron party is being tapped by the I-PAC through interactions with the leaders of this social category. IPAC is also assisting the TMC stand against the BJP’s tornado of advertisements and videos on social media and especially over the WhatsApp. From providing feedback from the ground to getting regular updates on concerns of voters, I-PAC is also keeping the party’s top leadership updated on various developments over the News and cyberspace. Party leaders stated that Mamata Banerjee is also aware about the BJP troll army’s relentless attack on her, which is targeted to polarize the state.

To counter this, the IPAC teams are also educating district-level leaders about the problems & pitfalls of social media blunders. Booth-level workers are being advised by the teams to attend training sessions on weekends to familiarize themselves with the party’s social media strategy.

As expected, there are critics of the approach taken by the I-PAC in designing the poll campaigns in states like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.  BJP MP from Darjeeling Raju Bista called out TMC and I-PAC over designing Insider vs Outsider theme, when the chief professional political strategist is himself a non- Bengali. The tension in the saffron camp with respect to Darjeeling can be understood given that Bimal Gurung, leader of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha who had for long supported BJP switched side to TMC last year.  The Darjeeling region has seen stability from 2011 onwards, when the TMC- INC coalition came to power at Kolkata. But, the Gorkhaland issue has occasionally seen a resurgence, which is being tapped by the BJP to gain & expand ground in the North Bengal political platform. The Darjeeling seat has been with the BJP from 2009 onwards, but from late 2020 there has been a simmering doubt whether it will retain this LS seat. Few days back, the efforts of BJP got a shot in the arms when few leaders from GJM switched to the saffron camp. But, this does not do away the challenge presented by Prashant Kishor to BJP.

The main problem which BJP faces is that Prashant Kishor, who is the driving force behind the state election campaigns for almost all non-BJP parties, has seen the internal functioning of the saffron camp. He is an ‘ally turned guide for the adversaries’ from the point of view of the BJP.  It would be, therefore wrong to extrapolate the impact of the defections from the TMC on the total outcome of the impending election in West Bengal this year.

Prashant Kishor knows what exact social frequencies the BJP works on, which more or less revolve around populism, religious nationalism and you vs us divide. Hence, Prashant giving the suitable antidotes to the BJP’s agenda in the state elections is causing a headache for the saffron party which is already cornered on the farmers’ protests and suppression of the rightful voices of dissent.