PATNA: The unseen force behind Nitish Kumar’s victory in Bihar is the man who once crafted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national election campaign. Prashant Kishor has emerged as the man with the Midas touch.
Mr Kishor started prepping his strategy for Nitish Kumar’s re-election as Bihar Chief Minister way back in March.”Nitish Kumar is one of the country’s most credible politicians,” Mr Kishor, who belongs to Buxar in Bihar, had told , explaining why he switched teams.
Mr Kishor quit a UN health expert’s job in Africa in 2011 to return to India and form a team of young professionals who worked to project Mr Modi as the face of good governance for the Gujarat elections in 2012 and then the national election last year.
The 37-year-old scripted an innovative campaign for PM Modi, which included the successful “chai pe charcha” or discussions over tea.His team included mostly MBAs and Ivy League and IIT graduates.
Sources say Mr Kishor’s tested strategy is perception-building, or creating a buzz around a party. For Nitish Kumar, ‘chai pe charcha’ morphed into “parcha pe charcha” or discussion over pamphlets, which asked people for feedback on the state government’s performance in the last 10 years. A “Har Ghar Dastak” (knock on every door) campaign took the outreach further.
“When we got here the challenge was that Nitish Kumar wasn’t really the talking point and if he was spoken of…it was for only controversial reasons. Our aim was to change that and make it a personality battle,” said Pratik Jain, who gave up his high-paying job to join Mr Kishor’s group.
“The big difference was last time we were fighting against the incumbent in 2014. This time we were fighting to make the incumbent win,” said Rishi Raj Singh, a former investment banker working with Mr Kishor.
From giant hoardings to instant rebuttals on social media, the team had to match the rival coalition at every step.

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