Can Prashant Kishor help Rahul Gandhi save face in UP?

Election strategist Prashant Kishor has worked as a key strategist behind the landslide victories of Narendra Modi in 2014 and Nitish Kumar in 2015. In political circles, he is regarded as the modern day "Chanakya" of India. And now he is gearing up for his third innings.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has hired him to strategise his party's campaign pitch for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Kishor will report directly to Rahul Gandhi and operate out of the party's war room at Gurdwara Rakabganj Road in Delhi.

On March 3, nearly 30 top Congress leaders from UP gave him a raft of ideas to help the party turn its electoral fortunes. Kishor, as they say, is already on the job.

But this is going to be the toughest challenge that Kishor has faced till date. Pushing Narendra Modi as PM candidate, when there was 10 years of anti-incumbency against the UPA, was not a hard job. The then Gujarat CM was already being perceived as the only viable alternative to the scam-tainted Congress government at the centre in 2014.

In the Bihar Assembly polls of 2015, Nitish Kumar, despite running a government for 10 years, had neither lost his popularity, nor his ability to charm voters. To top up his good PR ratings, there was also the solid boost that he got from tying up with Lalu Yadav.

The combined Muslim-Yadav vote bank, between Lalu and Nitish, propelled Nitish Kumar back to power. Both Modi and Nitish were the prime claimants for the top jobs in those elections. But in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is at its lowest ebb and by all counts stands at fourth place behind Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

So, while in his past two innings, Prashant Kishor was smoothing the path for the best bet, this time he has to make the dark horse win. And who says navigating the way around UP caste politics would be easy for even hardened strategists of identity politics?

Let's see how bad the Congress perception is, in UP. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the Congress’ 67 candidates managed only about 60.61 lakh of the 8.10 crore votes, or 7.50 percent, of the votes polled statewide. In 2009, the party got 18.25 per cent votes (1.01 crore of 5.54 crore). This means that the Congress vote share went down by almost 59 per cent between 2009 and 2014.

2014 haul turned out to be the party’s lowest vote share percentage in UP, barring the 1998 elections. In 2014, the Congress barely retained the seats of its president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi from Rae Bareli and Amethi respectively.

A study of the Lok Sabha elections reveals that the SP continues to receive support from Yadavs and Muslims. But it has failed to get support from any other social section. In the case of the BSP, its Jatav support remained more or less intact but it did not receive support from either the lower OBCs or the Muslims.

The BJP succeeded in evolving a grand Hindu coalition that added to their voter base by going beyond their traditional uppercase Hindu voters. While the Muslim vote by and large went to non-BJP parties the Congress were left with practically no core voter base support.

The Congress’ support base in UP was traditionally made up of the trinity i.e. Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits. Prashant Kishor has to woo these communities back to Congress' fold, if it really wants to regain power in UP. The question is - can he do it?

Brahmins account for over 10 per cent of UP's population and have the power to tilt the balance in about 100 seats across the Hindi heartland. In the current scenario, a majority of the Brahmin votes go to the BJP. Post election studies have revealed that a section of Brahmins voted for BSP, in the 2007 assembly elections and the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

One succesful BSP slogan in 2007 went, "Brahman shankh bajaayega, haathi aage jaayega (The Brahmin will blow the conch and the elephant will march forward)", and it brought Dalits and Brahmins together under the BSP umbrella. But later the Brahmins repented saying, "Hum shankh hee bajaate reh gaye, aur haathi aage chala gaya (We kept blowing the conch and the elephant went ahead of us)".

In the 2012 Assembly elections, SP fielded 45 Brahmin candidates, helping it garner substantial support from this caste and 21 were elected. In 2014, the Brahmins voted for the BJP.

So, while historically this caste had been with the Congress their commitment to any one party isn't considered rock solid anymore and there is a chance that they may not be averse to going back to the Congress.

After Atal Bihari Vajpayee became politically inactive, there has been no strong Brahmin leader in the BJP and if they can be convinced that their interests will be best protected by the Congress, Brahmins may just go with Rahul Gandhi.

Muslims, make up around 19 percent of the state's population this block can tilt election results in some 130 of the total 403 Assembly constituencies. In about 70 of those seats, they comprise 20 per cent of the total voters. Till the late 1980s, Muslims in Uttar Pradesh voted only for the Congress. They deserted the party after the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 and switched loyalties to the Samajwadi Party.

It is said that Muslims vote as a block for the candidate best placed to defeat the BJP. And they may switch their loyalty to a third party, in constituencies, where the SP is not seen in a winning position. But according to a CSDS study in 2014, in most seats in UP the vote got divided between the SP, the BSP and the Congress. This was contrary to the belief that they would vote en bloc to tactically defeat the BJP.

The Congress in 2009 had managed to consolidate the Muslim vote along with upper caste Thakurs and Brahmins and this had given the Congress 20 Lok Sabha seats. The SP had won 23 seats, BSP 20 and BJP had just managed 10 Lok Sabha seats.

But in the 2012 assembly polls, Muslims returned to the SP and Thakurs deserted the Congress for the BJP. The strategy, for Prashant Kishor to develop, would be one where a formidable caste combination gets added to the Muslim block voting tactically to defeat the BJP.

There are 66 Dalit castes in UP and they account for 21 per cent of the state's population. Jatavs alone constitute 56 per cent of the scheduled caste (SC) population. Others are Pasis 16 per cent and Dhobis, Koris and Balmikis combined are another 15 per cent. Around 5 per cent of the population are Gonds, Dhanuks and Khatiks. The Jatavs' association with the BSP is seen to be as rock solid as the Yadav association to the SP.

The Dalits, wooed away en masse, years ago by the BSP, would be the hardest to win back for the Congress.

In fact, a year ago the very idea would have sounded ludicrous but after the invincibility of the Dalit vote cracked in the last Lok Sabha elections, when a segment of Dalits deserted the BSP to vote for the BJP, all political parties have been trying to win them over in time for the next Assembly elections.

So, here too, there is a possibility for Prashant Kishor to woo, at least the non-Jatav Dalits to the Congress fold.

After the partial success of the Congress in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in UP, for which Rahul Gandhi was credited, he set his goal as Mission 2012 to capture power in the state. That turned out to be a disaster. So for Mission 2017, Prashant Kishor got roped in. This is going to be a trial by fire for both Prashant Kishor and the Congress VP.

Will Kishor's strategy translate into votes for the Congress in UP? Will the success of Mission 2017 be the big boost that Rahul Gandhi has been waiting for, all his political life? Popular political wisdom has it that the battle for New Delhi passes through Lucknow. So will 2017 and Prashant Kishor pave the way for Rahul Gandhi to move his bed to 7 RCR?

The UP voter holds the power in 2017 to make or break the fortunes of both these men: Congress scion Rahul Gandhi and the political wonder-kid strategist Prashant Kishor.

Question is, whose Waterloo will it be?