For nearly a decade, Prashant Kishor sold victory like a commodity. He stitched alliances, polished images, massaged egos, and handed out political makeovers with the confidence of a man who had cracked the algorithm of Indian democracy.
After years of scripting other people’s wins, he decided Bihar needed his own brand of ‘jan suraaj’ (people’s good governance), the sort of phrase that promises everything and guarantees nothing.
This election was his grand debut. Bihar’s voters, who have seen every hue of coalition, merger, split, re-split, and recycled promise, were supposed to embrace the strategist as the saviour.
After all, years ago, the same middle class had placed unreasonable faith in Arvind Kejriwal when he arrived with a muffler, a broom and a PowerPoint presentation on simple living and high thinking.
They believed he would remain a symbol of honesty until the liquor scam, the money trails, and the deluxe home renovation swallowed that halo whole.
Voters, perhaps having grown wiser after that episode, looked at Prashant Kishor’s self-certified purity with more suspicion than admiration this time.
Bihar was in no mood for a sequel of the outsider who promises cleanliness till the first stain appears story.
The grand debut that did not debut
As the Bihar results rolled in, the NDA marched confidently ahead and the Mahagathbandhan lagged behind, but the most notable absence was Jan Suraaj. PK’s party did not merely underperform. It did not perform at all.
Despite more than 200 candidates in the field, the confident tours on foot, the bus yatra, and the claim that if he failed he would take it as a personal defeat, the numbers presented a brutally simple picture.
Jan Suraaj did not show up in the seat charts. Its vote share, where it appeared at all, floated like fine print. It neither dented margins nor altered equations. It simply existed, quietly, politely, irrelevantly.
PK had once planned to contest all 243 seats. Then came defections, forced withdrawals, vanishing candidates and the usual nomination-stage theatrics that swallow new parties before the campaign even begins.
None of it ultimately mattered because the electorate had already delivered its verdict: Bihar was not buying this product.
The Kejriwal parallel to Bihar was rejected
PK, in his interviews, tried to package himself as that fresh, incorruptible force that once made Kejriwal an NRI favourite. In those days, NRIs in the Gulf wired contributions with the enthusiasm of people investing in a start-up that promised ethical governance.
What they got instead was a chief minister defeated by his own scandals and a Delhi that finally handed power to the Rekha Gupta-led BJP government in 2025.
That cautionary tale still hangs in the air. Bihar’s voters did not want another moral crusader who begins by talking about ‘clean politics’ and ends by explaining audits and renovation bills.
Strategist, yes, vote-winner no
Exit polls had already predicted misery for PK. The highest seat count any pollster generously offered him was five. In the final tally, even that token charity evaporated. Jan Suraaj finished exactly where Bihar’s instinct had placed it – nowhere.
The lesson, delivered without sentiment or suspense, is straightforward. A strategist can help others win. He can design a message, choreograph a campaign, even manufacture a leader. But he cannot automatically turn that skill upon himself.
Prashant Kishor, the man who once claimed he knew how to read India better than most politicians, has now discovered what Bihar voters have always known: winning elections on Excel sheets is one thing, winning them in the field is another. Jan Suraaj promised to reshape Bihar. Instead, it failed to leave a scratch.
