The defeat of Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj in the Bihar assembly elections has renewed attention on India’s growing crop of political ‘startups’, many of which launch with hype but struggle to become ‘unicorns’.
Jan Suraaj is the latest to fall short, following earlier failures such as actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam, which won no seats in the 2021 Tamil Nadu polls.
Attention now shifts to Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, founded last year by actor Vijay, which has generated strong interest ahead of next year’s Tamil Nadu elections.
Former Congress leader and political analyst Sanjay Jha said such parties often falter because “ideological clarity takes time,” adding that India has become “more conservative, less risk-taking, and ossified by conversations on traditionalism.”
Smaller outfits like the Plurals party in Bihar, which has twice drawn a blank, and regional groups with limited ambitions such as Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and Rashtriya Lok Morcha, continue to operate in narrow pockets.
In Uttar Pradesh, there are parties like NISHAD Party, Peace Party, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP).
In India, parties keep getting formed and disappear after a poor showing at the hustings, hardly creating any buzz. But this cannot be said about Kishor's Jan Suraaj because it created more than a splash, with many predicting that it could emerge as the next Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Bihar polls.
However, the media euphoria around it proved to be a mirage as the party was decimated at the hustings and failed to open its account in any of the 238 seats it contested.
According to the Election Commission, most of the Jan Suraaj candidates secured less than 10 per cent of the total votes polled and had their deposits forfeited.
Barring exceptions, parties in India that have gained a foothold are broadly characterised into three categories -- arising out of a movement, built around a household name, personality or a dynasty, and developed around a social or religious group or a specific ideology.
Kishor was a known personality but not like the ones that have succeeded in the past with most being movie stars or established politicians who broke away from their parent parties.
If one looks at the political landscape of the country, there are six national parties -- BJP, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), National People's Party (NPP), and AAP.
While the Congress arose from the freedom movement, the BJP arose from an ideology and gained from the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
The CPI(M) was built around ideology, the NPP was formed by a known politician who broke away from his parent party, the BSP was built around a social group and the AAP emerged from the India Against Corruption movement.
Very few political 'startups' have done well since the rise of the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1982 and that too was formed on the popularity of movie star N T Rama Rao.
Parties that have emerged as regional powerhouses after that such as West Bengal's Trinamool Congress, Biju Janata Dal in Odisha and AIMIM in Telangana have gained due to a known political figure who broke away from the parent party (Mamata Banerjee) or due to dynastic goodwill (Naveen Patnaik and Asaduddin Owaisi). Though AIMIM was formed much earlier, it gained popularity under Owaisi.
Other parties such as Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) are also examples that fall in either of the two categories -- breakaway factions or dynastic goodwill.
The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) was built around a movement for the protection of Dalits and has had limited success in Tamil Nadu.
Sanjay Kumar, a psephologist and former director at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), does not believe in the notion that political 'startups' work more in the South than the North but stated that it depends on specific factors.
"I feel you need a backdrop against which a new party is formed. One is, if your face is recognisable and you have a big personality. In the South, most of the examples are of movie stars. Your face should be absolutely recognised by the common people and not your work but your face. Second, the party formed against the backdrop of some movements for example the Aam Aadmi Party and the Assam Gana Parishad in Assam.
"The parties that have failed, including Prashant Kishor's party, don't fit into either of the two criteria. In the South, most of the parties that have been set up are by film stars, their face is recognised and that is why they have been more successful than some of the parties in North India," he opined.
Political analyst Sanjay Jha said that for a political 'startup', it is important to treat its debut as a semi-final and it is good not to live in a fool's paradise.
"Arvind Kejriwal is not the correct example: he was an outlier beneficiary of a high-profile 24x7 media-fuelled campaign, which was surreptitiously augmented by the RSS," he claimed.
In a crowded multipolar political ecosystem, the launch of a new ideology or entity struggles to get the prime time attention after the initial euphoria, he argued.
"... funds, right talent, operational planning and ideological clarity take time to accomplish. What makes matters more challenging is that the legacy status quoist political parties will go hammer and tongs at the new entrant, as it would invariably shrink their market share of votes.
"Thus, they have a huge incentive to ridicule and malign the new kid on the block as a surrogate of an existing behemoth," the former Congress leader said.
"I think Prashant Kishor followed the playbook brilliantly. But we must remember that under (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi, India has become more conservative, less risk-taking, and ossified by conversations on traditionalism," Jha alleged.
It is not easy to disrupt the political ecosystem because Modi would like a two-party structure, he claimed.
"It helps his case to see the destruction of regional aspirations and to limit his resources to just one pan-India alternative," Jha alleged.
The ruling NDA decimated the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar to retain power, dealing a body blow to the Congress and its ally RJD. The Jan Suraaj had a disappointing debut, drawing a blank.