’Behind every successful man is a woman’. But in certain cases, behind successful men are other men. If you do not have any clue as to who is working hard for Rahul Gandhi UP campaign, then read on.
Kanishka Singh, a 34-old young man is the man behind Rahul’s campaigns in UP a success. He is his chief strategist for the UP polls. Prior to this Kanishka has worked with Sheila Dixit in the run-up to Delhi’s assembly elections in 2003. A great hush-hush was created with his column, “Why Sonia is Like John Kerry” in outlook magazine, as it argued polls in India and the U.S.
Today if someone claims to be familiar to the Grand Old Party, they know Singh too. Call him a close adviser, confidant, guide or gatekeeper to Rahul Gandhi, if meeting Gandhi is what you looking up for, then there is no better way to ask Kanishka for an appointment.
Holding a MBA degree from Wharton School, Kaniska is busy overlooking the folks who run spread sheets and numbers at Rahul’s Tughlak lane home-office. A Congressman familiar to both Gandhi and Singh said, “Rahul doesn’t want woolly, gut-feel political hunches. He wants numbers, percentages, and Kanishka gets the data and analyses it for him. Both are analytical, it’s a good fit,” as reported by The Economic Times.
Kanishka and his team are burning their sweat out months before the dates for polls in Uttar Pradesh were announced by the Election Commission. Singh these days is working hard on plotting strategies and sifting through the possible names for the candidates. Singh said, “Once we know our rivals’ moves, we can plan ours better. It’s simple game theory.”
As Kanishka has an experience of working in the U.S. with investment bank Lazard Freres, he plans to implement some the best practices in his work. There are many members in the party that tend to mock at some of his practice but then it is very limited. Being with Gandhi 24/7 and working for him is not a easy task, it can take a toll anytime, he is playing a gamble, which would pay off amply if worked out well.
The long working hours explains Singh’s stubble and crumpled very well as he makes an appearance just behind Gandhi at a rally at southern UP. A bespectacled figure looking younger than his age is one who can be easily overlooked. Being polite all the time he speaks, “By the end of campaigning Rahul would have done 200 public meetings. That’s one rally for every two assembly seats.”
You can find him busy looking into his spreadsheets and arranging people who can be available for the campaign. In one of the recent rallies, a Congress MP from UP approaches him to have Raj Babbar as a star speaker. Kanishka glares at the spread sheets in his Black Berry and assured Raj Babbar or Azharuddin to be one of the star speakers.
With so much happening around, the younger son of diplomat Shailendra Kumar Singh who died in office as governor of Rajasthan in 2009 is left with no time for social life. But what probably drives him is the sheer feeling of being able to make a difference. In his article for Seminar Magazine called “Dreaming of India in 2010″, he predicted that both the Congress and the BJP would renovate their elderly leaderships by 2010.
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