Prashant Kishor And The Tale Of Two Predictions

The first prediction was about Bengal five years ago.

"BJP will struggle to cross double digits and will get less than 100 seats in West Bengal. Will quit my work if they do." - Prashant Kishor (December 2020)

And the BJP did not. Its final seat count was 77.

Cut to 2025, he made another prediction in the run-up to Bihar polls. 

"You can write this down. JDU, on its own strength, is going to get less than 25 seats. If this does not happen, I will quit politics. After the elections, the very existence of JDU will be in question." - Prashant Kishor (June 2025) 

This time, Prashant Kishor, whose own party was making a poll debut in Bihar, failed to live up to the hype. The Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) won 3 times the number of seats predicted by the former poll strategist. The JDU's final seat count was 85. 

Considered an election wunderkind after the campaign designed by him propelled Narendra Modi for a record third term as Gujarat Chief Minister in 2012, he followed it up with an even bigger win for his candidate: winning the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, catapulting Narendra Modi from Gujarat to Delhi.

Since then, his stock too has been on the rise, barring a few blips, the most notable being the Congress campaign he ran in 2017 for Uttar Pradesh polls. 

Everywhere he went, he repeated, and at times gave it in writing too, that the JDU will not cross the 25-seat mark and that this election would be Nitish Kumar's last hoorah. 

"All of Bihar knows that Nitish Kumar's mental and physical condition is not such that he can get anything done. A person who is sitting on a stage and forgetting the name of the Prime Minister sitting next to him; who, when the national anthem is playing, doesn't know whether it's the national anthem or a 'qawwali'... who hasn't addressed the media in a year. A person who is not in a state to look after himself... how will he look after Bihar? So, if you and I know this, don't PM Narendra Modi and Amit Shah?" he told NDTV in one of his many interviews in June.

Another reason he was so confident about his prediction, he said, was that a survey by his party has revealed that 62% of people in Bihar want change.

But the poll results show that the electorate wanted more of the same and with an even greater intensity, it appears.

So, where does that leave Prashant Kishor, whose own party was at the bottom of the pile in the polls? 

When asked to predict his own poll numbers, he liked to say "arsh pe ya farsh pe (either at the bottom or sky high).

In another of his interviews, he also said he would consider even 125-130 seats as a loss (122 being the majority mark), as he could not be satisfied with a simple majority. 

He did go all-out.

Pressed to answer what happens if his party loses, he assured he is here to stay. He will, like Malcom Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule that practice is the essence of genius, he says will stay in Bihar for the next 10 years and will give it his all.

He has his blueprint ready too. 

From building schools, to arresting migration, to building capacity, to ending corruption and to ushering in a new kind of politics, going by his public declarations and the detailed explanations on how he will do it.

The only hitch is, he said he will quit politics if his prediction about JD(U) seats is wrong. 

Which is the case now.

Considering the savant he is, in all things political, how will he navigate this one?

Let's revisit the Bengal prediction.

At that time too, he had made up his mind he was going to quit, arguing that it is not something he wanted to do "all my life". 

"I have done my bit. I-PAC (the organisation he ran) has far more capable people than me, I should take a break and try my hand at something else," he had said.

As the 2021 Bengal results trickled in, the trends showed BJP leading in more than 120 seats, predictably, the taunts followed. However, as the numbers firmed up, he had the last laugh.

He said he was going to quit anyway, but "am glad I am able to quit after the victory." 

"You (media)  were very apprehensive about what I had said. You did not believe me when I said I will quit if the BJP crosses 100 seats. Today, despite what I said is coming true, I have decided to quit", he said then.

He faces a similar predicament today.

"Revere Gandhi. Nonconformist. Egalitarian. Humanist. Believe in the Wisdom of Crowd," is how he describes himself in his X bio.

He hasn't spoken since the Bihar results have been declared. One will have to wait for his next move. Or, given his lately discovered fondness, for his next interview.