Why Mamata Needs Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC for 2021 Bengal Campaign

Kishor has been tasked with defeating the BJP in Bengal, while he himself is Vice President of JDU, a BJP ally.

On Thursday, 6 June, news broke that poll strategist Prashant Kishor was meeting West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, firming up a partnership between his political consultancy I-PAC and the Trinamool Congress for the 2021 Assembly elections in Bengal.

Interestingly enough, Kishor has been tasked with defeating the BJP in West Bengal, while he himself is Vice President of Nitish Kumar’s JDU, a key BJP ally. This could strain relations between the BJP and JDU in Bihar.

Since Kishor joined the JDU, none of his I-PAC campaigns (YSRC and Shiv Sena) have directly gone against the BJP. This is a first.

Mamata’s plea for help, though, does not come as a surprise, given that the legend of I-PAC has only been growing stronger, with the consultancy maintaining its near-perfect success rate. Their most recent client, YSRC’s Jagan Mohan Reddy, swept the 2019 Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Andhra Pradesh.

After helping Narendra Modi come to power in 2014, Nitish Kumar in 2015, Captain Amarinder Singh in 2017 and Jagan Mohan Reddy in 2019, I-PAC has been tasked with securing a Mamata victory in 2021. But what does a Trinamool campaign in collaboration with I-PAC really mean? And what are the challenges facing the master strategist and his team?

I-PAC’s Brief in Bengal: BJP Hatao, TMC Bachao

Mamata’s decision to get I-PAC on board Trinamool’s 2021 campaign is spurred by the BJP’s dramatic rise in popularity on her home turf of Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP went from winning 2 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 to 18 seats in 2019, with an incredible growth in voteshare of more than 23 percentage points, from 17% to 40.3%.

Though the TMC increased its own voteshare, from 39.8% to 43.3%, their Lok Sabha tally dropped from 34 to 22. This occurred due to the Left’s voteshare transferring almost entirely to the BJP.

The 22.6% fall in the Left Front’s voteshare corresponded with the BJP’s 23.3% rise in voteshare in Bengal.

Following their dream result in 2019, the BJP will now focus a significant amount of resources in building up to their campaign for the Bengal Assembly polls in 2021. I-PAC’s brief will be to ensure that the BJP’s growth is halted and that the TMC does not lose a share of its votebank to the saffron party.

Based on the 2019 Lok Sabha voteshares, even a decline of a couple of percentage points for the TMC could result in the party losing the reins of government in West Bengal. Prashant Kishor’s consultancy has been signed on to prevent exactly that.

Why Mamata is Worried

Apart from the Lok Sabha results, here are some other factors behind the TMC’s worry that its dominance in Bengal is fast slipping away.

• Large numbers of Left cadre switched sides and campaigned for the BJP in the run-up to the 2019 polls, believing that the BJP and not an ever-weakening Left Front was the best bet to defeat the Trinamool Congress. This will bolster the BJP’s efforts to build an organisational base in the state.
  
• Mass defections by TMC leaders towards the BJP shows that the latter is gaining mid-level strength in the state.

• The increasing hold that the BJP has over the political agenda in Bengal is a cause of concern within the TMC, with the saffron party’s ‘Jai Shri Ram’ sloganeering being a case in point. Nowadays, Mamata Banerjee and her party has mostly been ‘reacting’ to the BJP and been unable to set the agenda themselves.
  
• The diversion of focus to communal hot topics such as “minority appeasement” and “jail for Jai Shri Ram” allegations against Mamata has ensured that the spotlight is not on the kind of work the TMC government has or has not been doing. This is a tricky situation for Mamata, as polarisation built on these issues could result in a decrease in the TMC’s support base among Hindu voters.

This is the political setting for Prashant Kishor and I-PAC’s entry into West Bengal. So, given their record, what is I-PAC’s agenda expected to look like?

What I-PAC Brings to the Table

Here are a few characteristics of an IPAC-run campaign.

Converting issues to a list of concrete poll promises: From ‘Nitish Ke 7 Nishchay’ in Bihar 2015 to ‘Captain De 9 Nukte’ in Punjab 2017 and ‘Jagananna’s Navratnalu’ in Andhra 2019, one consistent feature of I-PAC campaigns has been to present to voters a list of concrete promises on their most pressing issues. This is a strategy that has evidently worked wonders in Bihar, Punjab and Andhra. Developing such a list of issue-based promises for Mamata could help bring public attention back from the BJP’s criticism of her government to what she is promising. Reclaiming the ability to set the agenda will be key if she is to reclaim the popular imagination.

Manage the messaging: I-PAC has earned a reputation for its structured campaign initiatives with focused messaging, akin to the kind big brands undertake for their marketing campaigns.

Here’s a recent example. In the weeks leading up to the Andhra election, the YSRC undertook the Ninnu Nammam Babu (We Don’t Trust You, Babu) campaign. The sole purpose of the campaign was to “highlight the biggest failures of Chandrababu Naidu’s government” and the TDP’s U-turns on various issues including the Special Category Status for the state.

YSRCP Coordinators visited 20 villages in each of the 175 Assembly constituencies and held village-level meetings focusing on Chandrababu Naidu’s failures. I-PAC has excelled in the conceptualisation and execution of such focused campaign initiatives.

Expertise in targeted outreach: For example, In Andhra Pradesh, I-PAC helped the YSRC reach out to around 60,000 influencers in society (like teachers and social workers, not social media influencers) through the Jagan Anna Pilupu (Jagan Anna Is Calling You) initiative. Such efforts help develop a word-of-mouth communication network through which the party’s messaging percolates. I-PAC’s experience in executing such initiatives will give the TMC an edge to their campaign.

Professional approach: I-PAC typically has one coordinator in each Assembly constituency in the state, and there is a well-oiled system of functioning within the team. Each I-PAC Assembly Constituency Coordinator not only reports back to the central team, but also aids the MLA candidate in that particular constituency with his campaign planning. This system also ensures that the I-PAC team has its ears on the ground, and coupled with regular surveys, they have a detailed grasp of what the people’s issues and perceptions are in different areas.

This also helps I-PAC advise the party’s star campaigners to make adjustments to their speeches based on which part of the state they are campaigning in, focusing on the issues that resonate the most with voters there. A survey-based, data-backed analytical campaign is relatively more primed for success, and I-PAC’s processes help their client in achieving this.

Projecting a strong leader: I-PAC campaigns tend to revolve around strong leaders. For example, Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Captain Amarinder Singh in Punjab and Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra. In UP 2017, where the Congress had refused to announce a CM face, I-PAC’s campaign came a cropper. In the case of West Bengal though, they already have a strong leader in Mamata Banerjee.

I-PAC’s Enviable Record

The only electoral campaign that I-PAC has lost so far is with the Congress in 2017’s Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, making their overall win rate four out of five. In that solitary unsuccessful campaign though, Prashant Kishor and his team were reportedly kept on the sidelines after disagreements with the Congress on how to run the campaign in UP.

• I-PAC’s inaugural poll project was to help manage the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign in 2014, and with the party becoming the first to get a simple majority in the House in three decades, it was quite the impressive debut.
• Next, they turned to Bihar in 2015, ensuring that Nitish Kumar returned as Chief Minister on the back of a massive victory by the JDU-RJD-Congress mahagathbandhan. I-PAC had helped trounce the BJP, the party they had been working for just a year ago.
• For the 2017 Assembly polls, they teamed up with the Congress in UP and Punjab, but only the latter campaign proved successful.
• In the two years since, they worked for Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRC in Andhra Pradesh, catapulting him to the CM’s post in 2019, with 22 out of the state’s 25 Lok Sabha seats to boot and a decimation of principal rivals TDP.

Challenges Ahead

Will it be easy for I-PAC to collaborate with a mercurial Mamata? There is a great deal of understanding and cohesion required for an external agency to be able to come in and work hand-in-hand with a political party. The success of Prashant Kishor’s team and I-PAC’s processes will depend on the cooperation of TMC leaders at different rungs, beginning right from the top.

Mamata will need to be receptive of ideas that may be different from her own. For example, I-PAC strategists may advise the TMC chief against having public outbursts on the issue of BJP workers chanting “Jai Shri Ram” slogans to heckle her. Or they may warn her about the bad optics of arresting individuals who make cartoons or memes mocking her. Will she be willing to listen?

I-PAC is also said to prefer working with leaders who have a considerable degree of control over their party, so that they can function without much opposition from within the party. Fortunately for Mamata Banerjee, that bit isn’t a problem.

That the BJP has an advantage in terms of greater resources is no secret. A recent report by the Centre for Media Studies estimates that the party spent around Rs 27,000 crores on its 2019 Lok Sabha campaign. The financial wherewithal of the BJP will severely outstrip the TMC in the 2021 Bengal campaign as well.

Given these challenges, can Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC help Mamata Banerjee complete a hat-trick of Assembly election victories in West Bengal? Or will the BJP dent I-PAC’s near-perfect record by ousting the Trinamool Congress in the 2021 polls?

The elections may be two years away, but the buildup has already begun in Bengal.