Prashant Kishore has now become the real Chanakya of the contemporary Indian politics. Many were little bit skeptical about his solid contributions behind turning Narendra Modi from a powerful state leader to a charismatic national leader. However, the thing is quite clear after the grand victory of Nitish Kumar in the Bihar Assembly Election, 2015. It was Prashant Kishore lead team which micro managed the entire campaign which matched the high decibel campaigns of the BJP.
Profile of Prashant Kishore
Kishore was born and brought up in Bihar. His father was a well-known doctor in the Bhojpur region. Kishore started his career as a health care activist. He used to mobilize people to demand health amenities. He had extensively worked in the rural areas of Bihar and then Andhra Pradesh. His work attracted UNICEF and they offer some assignments to him. Kishore took the job and started to work with various agencies of United Nations. In five years, he had become a renowned face in the world of Health Activism. He was later offered to work with the UN Aid Mission in Chad, Africa. He took this assignment even though he didn’t know French.
Meeting with Narendra Modi
While working in Chad, Prashant came across a paper about the prevailing poor health indices in the backward states of India. This was a Planning Commission report. The report further suggested that the indices are quite healthy in some states, primarily in Gujarat. Prashant did lots of data mining and send a report to the Prime Minister Office of Manmohan Singh and showed that the health indices of Gujarat are also quite lackluster.
Manmohan Singh didn’t take any notice of this report. However, one of his officials sent it to the CM office, Gujarat. Narendra Modi came across that report and startled by the revelation. He asked his officer to immediately contact Prashant Kishore in Chad and fixed an appointment whenever he will be in India.
After some time, Prashant and Modi met in Gandhi Nagar. Modi asked him to work and guide a team for some social sector policy initiatives. That was year 2011 and Anna Andolan was going on in the country. Prashant decided to work with Modi.
In a very short span of time, he became quite close to Modi. They started to discuss about lots of politics. Modi was impressed with his ideas about using modern technology in election. Prashant also convinced Modi that brand of a political leader has become quite important in the contemporary times.
Prashant had also launched Center for Accountable Governance (CAG) with active support of Modi. The sole aim of this firm was to manage brand of Narendra Modi. In fact, Modi had started his preparation for Lok Sabha 2014 with CAG two years back.
Prashant Kishore and Modi worked closely and the result is for everyone to see.
Parting Ways with Narendra Modi
However, Prashant Kishore and Narendra Modi couldn’t retain this relationship for long. BJP leaders were wary of Prashant. They were fearing that this man may take all credit of spectacular performance in the Lok Sabha election.
At the same time, Prashant Kishore was expecting some sort of policy assignment. He had already started a new initiative for this, namely Indian People Action Committee (IPAC).
Narendra Modi remained silent. Amit Shah advised Modi to not give any fodder to Prashant.
Meeting with Nitish Kumar
The news about Prashant and Modi parting ways was everywhere in the power circle. In October 2014, Pawan Verma asked Prashant Kishore to meet Nitish Kumar. At that time, Nitish Kumar was seeing political death, even though he had very good image in Bihar.
Nitish and Prashant met and the deal was done. IPAC came to Bihar. Prashant hired many highly qualified people from IIM and IITs to work for this tough task. He started preparation way before BJP could start. Every move was extensively planned and meticulously executed. Prashant managed social media platforms of Nitish Kumar.
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