Hyderabad: The impact of the use of data in elections is over-hyped, data analytics and machine learning are not a game-changer in the Indian elections, said Mr Prashant Kishor who is credited with using such data to craft the victories of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the former JD(U)-RJD combine in Bihar.
“They might help but are not critical to voter persuasion. What they show you as an ‘election war room’ on TV is just a call centre. Eight hundred million people in the country do not make Rs 100 a day. You can’t persuade them using Facebook. I don’t think they have time to surf data on the net. But they have the same vote as 300 million people who are on social media,” Mr Kishor told the closing ceremony of the Indian Leadership Summit at ISB on Saturday.
He said his organisation IPAC was just a part of the process and people like him were hugely overrated. He said the people in rural Andhra Pradesh “were asking for drainage, which is single biggest problem which most of us get wrong.”
Dismissing claims that he was working with the BJP or the Congress, Mr Kishor said he was working with the YSRC. “It is far easier for a regional party to get things executed but an old party like the Congress has its own culture. Rahul and I are not working together because we are not on the same page about ideas and plans,” he said.
“I have abandoned the challenge of the Congress because it is not my party. I took a deliberate decision to not to work with the Congress after UP because if you can’t execute a plan it ends in a disaster,” Mr Kishor said.
He termed his working in Punjab for the Congress as childish. “Punjab was one of their biggest victories, showed the Congress can win, We took up the Punjab election for Capt. Amarinder Singh because we wanted to prove who’s a better campaigner, AAP or the IPAC. It was a bit childish but we wanted to settle scores with the Aam Aadmi Party,” Mr Kishor said.
He said he would not be campaign for any party for the 2019 elections in the way he did it earlier and wants to get out of the domain in two years. “Post 2014 I didn’t leave Mr Modi because Mr Nitish Kumar paid a hefty cheque. He didn’t have one. I left Mr Modi because he couldn’t set up an institution he wanted for last mile service delivery, open up government for lateral entry which was meant to be an arm of the PMO, Mr Kishor said.
He said Mr Modi was keen but could not because he was new in office and “I was in a hurry. People may have told him it was too big a risk. Yes I was in a hurry,” Mr Kishor said.
He urged people not to underestimate politicians and the NOTA option is still inconsequential “People often say they don’t know who to vote for but they do go and vote. If you keep waiting for someone ideal, it won’t ever happen”, he said
About caste, he said, “Caste is a reality but I don’t see it as a problem. Just because parties seek votes on caste lines it is not a bad thing. Social congregation happens in every country.”
