Misreading PowerPoint for Power — The PK Way

 

Every election in India throws up its own messiah. Some come draped in Gandhi caps, others in linen kurtas. Prashant Kishor came in spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. For a decade, he sold victory like a detergent brand—bright results guaranteed, terms and conditions never disclosed. But the salesman who once packaged others’ triumphs now finds himself unable to market his own.

It is not that Kishor lacks intelligence. Far from it. He is clever—too clever for his own good. He mastered the arithmetic of caste and constituency, the art of whispering strategies into chief ministers’ ears, and the knack of staying invisible when his clients failed. For a time, that invisibility was his greatest strength. Now, it has become his curse. For when he finally stepped into the light, he looked painfully ordinary—like a magician revealed to be a man with sweaty palms and a box of old tricks.

He claims to represent Jan Suraj —people’s good governance. But the people of Bihar, who have seen everything from jungle raj to liquor bans, are not easily seduced by slogans. They can smell an opportunist faster than a Delhi journalist can spot free buffet wine. Kishor’s party, if one may call it that, is less a movement and more a society of restless professionals—doctors, professors, engineers—who discovered politics late in life, like men who suddenly take up yoga after retirement.

And then there’s his sanctimony. Kishor lectures like a priest who has misplaced his faith but not his tone. Every politician is corrupt; every government, incompetent; every system, broken. His campaign speeches sound like WhatsApp forwards read aloud with the gravity of a TED Talk. But when someone asks him a simple question—about his degree, his land, his money—he fumes, walks out, or turns rude. Bihar has seen loudmouths before, but this one carries the arrogance of an untested intellectual.

Politics is not data. It is dust, sweat, gossip, caste, and compromise. Nitish Kumar understands that; Lalu Prasad Yadav made a career out of it. Kishor, for all his cleverness, seems to think he can algorithm his way to the Chief Minister’s chair. He forgets that in Bihar, politics is not a formula—it’s a folk song. And he doesn’t know the tune.

His critics call him vote-katua—the spoiler, the man who wins nothing but ensures others lose. It may be true. But perhaps Kishor’s real loss is not electoral—it’s spiritual. Once the trusted strategist of prime ministers and chief ministers, he now stands like a man shouting slogans in an empty stadium, mistaking his echo for applause.

He has compared himself, at times, to Gandhi, starting his padyatra from Champaran. But Gandhi walked with conviction; Kishor walks with calculation. Gandhi fought liquor; Kishor wants to sell it again. There is irony here so thick, one could bottle it and label it “Patna Premium.”

I suspect Kishor will end like most reformers without roots—in a book, not a ballot box. A few years from now, some academic will write about him: “The strategist who mistook consultancy for leadership.” His name will be footnoted between the ambitious and the absurd.

And perhaps that is how it should be. In a democracy of dreamers, there must always be one man who reminds us that charisma cannot be crowdsourced, and that political genius cannot be measured by the number of slides in a PowerPoint.

As I would say, with a wry smile and a peg of Scotch in hand: Prashant Kishor is not the worst thing to happen to Bihar—but he’s certainly the most overrated.