As Prashant Kishor & Sharad Pawar huddle, 'third-front' easier said than done?

When a famed election strategist meets a grand old player of politics, there is understandably a lot of room for speculation. Fresh off his recent success in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal,  poll strategist Prashant Kishor met NCP chief Sharad Pawar at his residence on Friday. The meeting went on for three hours and set tongues wagging in political circles. Is there a plan being chalked out to counter Narendra Modi's BJP in 2024? Has Sharad Pawar, the man behind stitching up the Maha Vikas Aghadi, taken it upon himself to stitch up a grand alliance for 2024?

Prashant Kishor has been around for a while now. The 2014 grand Modi victory set the ball rolling for the poll strategist who emerged as the man behind Nitish Kumar's campaign in 2015 - 'Bihar me Bahaar hai, Nitish Kumar hai'. He championed Captain Amarinder Singh's win in Punjab in 2017 and the AAP victory in Delhi in 2020. The victories of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and MK Stalin in Tamil Nadu further cemented his record.

On the other hand, Sharad Pawar is said to live by the adage of 'no permanent friends and no permanent enemies in politics'. He had left the Congress on the issue of Sonia Gandhi's foreign origins but unhesitatingly came together with the party he had left to forge an alliance at the Centre and now in Maharashtra.

Can these two gentlemen steer a path for a third front? Can they bring together warring factions in the same state so they could oust the common enemy in Modi? 

Pawar-Kishor eyeing 2024 general elections?

Pawar has successfully brought the Shiv Sena and Congress together in Maharashtra but can this alliance be stitched for the general elections? That would mean the national party Congress conceding as a junior partner to both NCP and Shiv Sena, something it is clearly unhappy with, given the recent statements of Nana Patole. It would also mean that Congress would have to settle for less in states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala where the regional parties have emerged giant killers.

The regional parties have shown that they could stop the BJP juggernaut but putting them all on one stage is a mammoth task that has remained unaccomplished.

Can Prashant Kishor and Pawar together initiate a 'third front'-type play with more success than the likes of Chandrababu Naidu managed in the lead-up to the 2019 elections? Can they address each state's internal contradictions that would need persuasion and tireless negotiation? Can Didi, the Left in Kerela, Mayawati and Akhilesh in UP, YSRCP and TDP in Andhra Pradesh bury their past to march towards the byzantine power corridors of Delhi?

For the BJP, it has become easier to make inroads into state politics where Congress is the challenger. But the regional parties remain its Achilles heel. Prashant Kishor who spoke about 'quitting this space' after the assembly elections knows more than anyone else the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Could that mean he is no longer looking at the transformation of regional straps into giant killers in their limited political spaces but pulling out a force that can challenge the colossal Modi enigma?

On the other hand, Sharad Pawar could help bring a consensus on a (non-Gandhi?) face that could be put opposite Modi in the national arena. There have been numerous efforts made to zero down on one name but all in vain so far. The regional parties have no common ideology to keep them together but a feeling of anti-BJPism and their desire to oust Modi. Their effort at weaving the third front has failed each time because of the myopic view of their own provincial ambitions.

The decimation can only happen once the players are convinced that there is only one king and it's better to be a pawn on the winning side rather than being written off a third time over. Sharad Pawar can get the players on the chessboard and PK can determine every move. But to checkmate the 'king', you need to have one on your own side first.