Interview/ Prashant Kishor, Jan Suraaj leader
Sheikhpura House is, at the moment, one of the most sought-after addresses in Patna. This is where Prashant Kishor has been staying for the past two and a half years, after he quit political consultancy to become, in his words, a political activist en route to becoming a politician.
The address has seen a rush of visitors in the run-up to the launch of Jan Suraaj, Kishor’s new political party. Earlier, said an associate, they were reaching out to the people; now the people were approaching them. Kishor has been meeting all of them, thanking them for coming to Patna for the party’s launch.
A recurring theme in his interactions is that the party will work for the future of Bihar’s children. He tells people that, in six months, the name Jan Suraaj will be heard everywhere in the state. He has a bad throat after all the speeches he has been making, but he knows he cannot take a break.
For the past several days, Kishor has been burning midnight oil to plan the party’s launch. His meticulous planning and eye for detail show in the publicity material. The banners and posters are in yellow and black, the colours that Kishor believes attract maximum attention.
Kishor is the newest leader in Bihar’s vibrant political landscape. After attending the convention where Jan Suraaj was formally launched as a party, he returns to his house surrounded by supporters who raise slogans of ‘Jai Bihar’. He shakes hands with everyone and gives occasional hugs. The challenge for him is mammoth―make an impact in the complex political map of Bihar.
In the midst of all the excitement, Kishor sits down for an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, his first since the launch of the party. In a detailed interaction, he talks about the vision behind his party, how it is distinct from the others, and what it seeks to achieve for Bihar. Excerpts:
Q How is Jan Suraaj different from other political parties?
A This party is not being formed by an individual or a particular caste or a social group or a family. This is being formed by more than 10 million people who have come together with the desire to change the situation in Bihar, which continues to be deprived, uneducated and poor, I would say right at the bottom of the pool in all political indicators. For decades, we have suffered and the people of Bihar have tried all parties that existed in the state. They have seen that nothing has changed.
During this whole movement, what we have tried to do is to go to the villages, talk to the people and tell them that the only way you can improve your lives is to come together and pick a leader who is from your own community, from your own village. But much more than that, much more than the leaders, it is how you vote for them. The people of Bihar have voted for ideologies, for caste, for religion…. Rather than focusing too much on who you vote for, you should be more concerned about what you vote for. So if you want your children’s education and employment, you have to vote for it. We will continue to go to the villages, tell people that this is how you can change your lives, this is how you can change the destiny of your children.
Jan Suraaj means people’s governance. It is not about one caste, it is not about one religion, it is about whatever is good for people at large.
Big dreams: Bihar continues to be deprived, uneducated and poor, and Kishor says his party will work to change it | Shutterstock
Q So how will you ensure that the voice of the people is going to be heard and counted?
A We are making a constitution for the party, how tickets will be distributed, who will get the tickets… how people will have control over those who get elected. The leader of the party or a group of individuals in the party will not select the candidate. Jan Suraaj will announce the probable names of people who want to fight election with us…so that people can assess, discuss. Whoever is selected by the people will become the automatic candidate of Jan Suraaj.
We are going a step further. What happens if the person, after getting elected, turns out to be not a good choice? Should we wait for five years, or should we have the power to recall? So we are proposing in our constitution that the people who are coming together to form Jan Suraaj would have the right to recall the elected representative.
Q What makes you confident that Jan Suraaj will form the next government in Bihar?
A My understanding of what I have seen, witnessed firsthand, in the last two and a half years. In the last 25 years, nothing has changed in Bihar. When Lalu Prasad became chief minister of Bihar, it was the poorest, most backward state in India. When Nitish Kumar became chief minister in 2005, Bihar was the most backward and right at the bottom of all the development indicators. Even after 20 years with Nitish as leader, Bihar is still the poorest state. There is tremendous discontent among people. Then why the people have not dislodged these governments? They have. Actually, Lalu won Bihar only once in 1990. Beyond that, he has been part of the ruling coalition. Similarly, people of Bihar mandated Nitish Kumar only once, in 2005. After that he has never won a majority [on his own]. The people never had an alternative which was big enough, credible enough, with which they could have gone.
March to power: Prashant Kishor during his padyatra at Majhaulia in West Champaran district in November 2022 | PTI
Q When you enter the electoral arena, who do you see as your main rival?
A If I go back to the recent Lok Sabha elections, the National Democratic Alliance was ahead in 176 assembly constituencies. So, naturally, ultimately, the fight will be between the Jan Suraaj and the NDA.
Q So are the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal on their way out?
A I think it is on the wall, clearly visible to everyone. Lalu ji is no longer active. His son is leading the RJD. And Nitish Kumar has almost become a lame-duck chief minister, whose government is run by a couple of handpicked advisers who are retired bureaucrats. Nitish Kumar, physically, mentally, organisationally, politically, is in no position to be in the chair of the chief minister of a state as big as Bihar.
Q Who will be the chief ministerial face of Jan Suraaj? Will it be you?
A I announced I will not be the leader of the party. You saw we announced the leader of the party today. Our agenda is clear: first we go to the masses and we will continue doing that. I am leading that part. The party is formed and the leadership has been constituted. Once these two things are done, then we are going to share the vision that Jan Suraaj has for the people of Bihar. We are going to do it sometime in late February or March. After that, if the people vote for Jan Suraaj, the elected people will decide who the chief minister will be.
Q Are you open to the idea of becoming CM?
A I am not fighting the election; I am not the leader of the party.
Q You won’t be fighting the election?
A Unless the party says I have to fight the election, I don’t intend to. My programme is to continue working because whatever I have said publicly, I will never go back on that. If I have said that I will continue to walk, I will walk, come what may. Even if the election happens before, I will still not stop walking.
Q The general perception is that the voters of Bihar vote on caste lines. What makes you feel this would change in 2025?
A The view that the voters of Bihar vote based on caste shows the malafide assessment of people coming from outside Bihar. When you say people of Bihar vote only based on caste, are we saying that in other states, people are not voting based on caste? In 2014 the BJP won more than 30 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. Everyone says the vote is not for the BJP, the vote is for Narendra Modi. In 2019, the alliance won 39 seats. This year, they won more than 30 seats. How many people of Modi’s caste live in Bihar?
Yes, caste is one of the major factors. But caste is not the only factor. There are other factors. It could be religion, it could be fear. Fear is not only among Muslims. In Bihar, Muslims vote for the RJD because they are fearful of the BJP. Similarly, a big majority of the NDA vote is because they are fearful of Lalu.
Q You spoke about revoking prohibition. But it is said this would not go down well with the women.
A There is no proof backed by data that through prohibition any society, state or country can achieve a better life. People also talk about morality. Now, if somebody says Mahatma Gandhi has said this, Gandhi never said that enact law for prohibition. For Gandhi, stopping liquor consumption was a social effort. Even if we take it that there is some merit in prohibition, the benefit will come only if it is implemented on the ground. What we have in Bihar is not prohibition. In the name of prohibition, the liquor shops are closed and home delivery has flourished. Liquor is available in every house at an exorbitant price. And in the process, the state is losing close to Rs20,000 crore in revenue every month. Where is this money going? This money is going to corrupt politicians, police and liquor mafia. What we are proposing is: remove prohibition, and whatever we earn as revenue, use it to build a new education system in Bihar.
Q The RJD has questioned the real intent of Jan Suraaj. They say you are working to damage the RJD and help the BJP.
A First of all, the BJP is not big enough a party here to win Bihar on their own. In the last assembly election, their vote share was 19.6 per cent. The most scared party of all is the BJP. They will say that I am the agent of the RJD-INDIA alliance. The fact of the matter is both formations, the RJD-led alliance and the Nitish-BJP alliance, have become so accustomed to getting free vote. People don’t like them, but still vote for them because they are fearful of the others. So when you are so used to getting free vote, you don’t want people to have a third option. The moment a third option comes, you will be scared. So when you are scared, what will you do? You will make some justification.
The culprits for Bihar’s situation are Lalu and Nitish. But the real blame should lie with the BJP and the Congress. Why? Because people of Bihar voted for Lalu ji once. But remaining 10 to 12 years, they have been able to be in government because the Congress extended help. Why did the Congress do that? It is because they wanted the support of a few MPs to run the government in Delhi. What happened to the Congress? People finished the Congress in Bihar.
The same mistake is being done by the BJP. This is the party which, at least in the last few years, has been so ruthless. They break your party, they buy MPs, MLAs, do whatever it takes to form government. Just see the situation in Bihar. It’s unique. The BJP has 75 MLAs. Nitish has 42. The BJP voluntarily says we don’t want the chief minister’s post. Why? Because they want a few extra MPs from Bihar. So, the way people have punished the Congress, the BJP will be punished, too.
Q A criticism about you is that you have worked with all the leaders and parties you are now attacking.
A Actually, not all the leaders. I have worked with Nitish Kumar. In fact, in 2015, a lot of people think that he would not have come back to power but for my support. I must explain why I helped him in 2015 and why I am opposing him now. There is a great difference between Nitish Kumar of 2014-15 and 2024-25. The person who I helped was an administrator, who was seen as ‘Sushasan Babu’, somebody who started some work to bring Bihar out of the misery of jungle raj that people witnessed during Lalu ji’s regime. I helped that guy. At least there was some morality in him. His party lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. In response he resigned from the chief minister’s post. As railway minister, when there was a rail accident, he resigned. During Covid, lakhs of people walked in horrible conditions with their families with no help from the government. This guy did not come out of his bungalow. The person I helped in 2014-15 had not lost the election but he left the chief minister’s post. Today, he has lost the election but he is still sticking to the post.
Q Another question raised is about the funding of Jan Suraaj.
A How much money do you think I have spent in the last two years? Put a figure. Rs100 crore? I have helped people form governments, win states. People say that I have worked for money. So do you think that if I were to raise Rs100 crore, I don’t have enough people to raise Rs100 crore? So this is a ridiculous argument.
Are you asking how Lalu runs his party, where he gets his funds from? How JD(U) gets its funds? They get their money from sand mafia, liquor mafia, transfer, posting, money they make from the schemes that are meant for the poor. I am raising money from those who I have helped in the last ten years.
We are setting up probably the biggest ever decentralised crowdfunding platform in Bihar. And I have given this clarion call that out of the 13 crore population we have, if two crore people give Rs100 each, we would be able to raise Rs200 crore.
Q During the Lok Sabha elections, when you predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP would come back with an enhanced mandate, questions were raised about your motive.
A I had said five or six things. First, whatever the numbers, Narendra Modi is going to become prime minister. Second, whatever we are observing, data or other evidence, the intensity of the blind support he used to have has come down drastically.
Third, we gave him 300 seats. And this is where I made a mistake. If you look at the vote share, they have got almost the same vote share as they got in 2019. But in terms of number of seats, definitely my assessment was off by almost 10 per cent. Which is a big number. But we are not gods. We make the assessment based on data. But you were not obliged to listen to me and then vote. And when did I say [this]? After five rounds of elections.
But beyond this, I had also made three more important points. That Modi will be a weaker prime minister compared to his first and second terms. Because there is big discontent on the ground among farmers, among youth, and growing inequality is a major issue. I had also said that the BJP leadership of Uttar Pradesh will be one of the formidable challenges the BJP leadership at the national level and the [Rashtriya Swayamsevak] Sangh will have to deal with in the coming years. Of the six things I said, five turned out to be true.
Q How stable do you think this Modi government would be?
A The stability of this government purely depends on the election outcomes of the next eight or nine states… Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi, Bihar, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam. If the BJP does very well in many of these state elections, then they would be very stable.
Q How do you look at Rahul Gandhi’s leadership in the light of the Lok Sabha election results?
A The Lok Sabha election results have settled the debate about whether Rahul Gandhi is the leader the Congress should bank on. He has proved in the last two and a half years… whatever he has done, the effort he has put, definitely there are some signs of the revival of the Congress, to say the least.
But, has he become the leader of the country? I doubt. Indira ji, who was one of the tallest leaders of Congress, had 154 MPs in her worst defeat in 1977. Rahul ji, with his best victory, has got 99. He has some distance to go before he becomes the leader of the country.
Q Coming back to Jan Suraaj, will you take it to other states?
A Our entire focus right now is on Bihar. In the next 10 years, how Bihar becomes one of the top 10 states of India, that is the focus. Winning election is just part of that. Winning election is difficult. But it is not the most difficult thing. Winning election with the right people is the difficult thing.