Will 2017's elections be all about Prashant Kishor vs Ram Madhav-Amit Shah?

India, or at least New Delhi, is always looking for the next Chanakya.

In 2014, a man who was until then better known for his alleged involvement in a kidnapping and murder case, suddenly became the nation's top political strategist. Soon enough Amit Shah had become the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party and was being described as a political grandmaster who couldn't be beaten.

Until 2015, that is. That year, Shah's desperate efforts to course correct just as Delhi went to the polls led to complete disaster for the BJP. And if the capital was just a very visible, albeit minor, setback, the ensuing loss in Bihar wasn't so easily explained away. Even worse for Shah, the BJP loss brought with it the emergence of a new "master strategist", one who could take credit for both 2014 and 2015: Prashant Kishor.

Kishor designed Narendra Modi's campaign in 2014 before falling out with Shah and switching over to the Janata Dal (United), where he would help shape the Nitish Kumar-led grand alliance to victory. Soon after, he was approached by politicians from across the country, and is now working on Uttar Pradesh and Punjab for the Congress. But those elections are not till 2017.

Chanakya-of-the-season

Another year, another Chanakya. The flavour of the 2016 season is Ram Madhav, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh loyalist who is now described as the third-most important person in the BJP after Modi and Shah. Madhav was responsible for the alliance that has kept the BJP in power in Jammu and Kashmir and is being credited for the saffron party's red carpet welcome into the North East by way of a majority in the Assam Assembly.

Meanwhile, a penchant for adding drama to daily governance has caused most people to forget the man who was touted as India's electoral master strategist way back in 2013: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The Aam Aadmi Party head's stunning victory over then-Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was a genuine shock to the Indian political system, though it has been buried under some of the muck that has become attached to Kejriwal's name since. Despite this, he did manage to script a massive election victory in Delhi last year, winning 67 out of 70 seats while facing up to Amit Shah.

Waiting in the wings

Also waiting to return to electoral mastermind status: Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. In the other column, there are those already being touted as India's next Chanakya, including BJP number cruncher Rajat "don't call me the BJP's Prashant Kishor" Sethi.

Sethi, the youngest one of this lot, is the one you should be reading as you prepare for the next seven months of punditry that will breathlessly tell you whom Kishor is talking to in Punjab and what Amit Shah thinks of Dalit votebanks in the south eastern portion of western Uttar Pradesh.

"Young professionals add some dynamism and sense of urgency to an election process but in no respect [can] one small, short term team claim to be a "king maker". Even before the concept of campaign managers came into play, political parties fought and won elections. They organized rallies, held big karyakarta meetings, managed hoards of volunteers. Are we saying they were not professional enough?"

The tendency of the Indian state to over centralise also lends itself toward sycophancy, which is why such Great Men are described as architects of electoral victories that often have as much to do with the economy or identity politics.

All of the 2016 elections can be explained this way: Assam had powerful anti-incumbency after 15 years of Congress rule. Kerala swung from UDF to LDF as it does every five years. West Bengal still hasn't gotten over its three-decade-long Leftist hangover. And Amma simply had too much money.

Great Man theories

Focusing too much on the strategies of the party campaigners, as Sethi points out, can obscure the real issues that have almost as much to do with how people vote. For journalists it is an easy opportunity to fall back on identity politics shorthand – which section of which caste in which area will vote for whom – as a way of understanding electoral strategies, without engaging with either the economics or the real atmosphere.

That said, Indian political parties are also over-centralised, lumbering, often inept creatures that lend themselves to Great Men (and occasionally women). One person can indeed have massive impact, which is why there will always be demand for the Chanakaya-of-the-season.

It takes a Kishor or a Kejriwal to capitalise on the gap left by an incumbent government in a way that a Rahul Gandhi, Amarinder Singh or even Sarbananda Sonowal might not be able to.

As we look ahead to next year's elections – in Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Punjab and, most prominently, Uttar Pradesh – it seems we have already jumped ahead to the Great Man portion of coverage. This is mostly because of Prashant Kishor, both his tendency to ensure he gets headlines as well as the effect he is having on the Congress party.

Now that the BJP has had a chance to ring in the third year of Modi's government with its victory in Assam, it won't be long before we hear of Shah (and maybe Madhav or even Sethi) looking at UP. Kejriwal, meanwhile, visited Goa on Sunday.

So before you are inundated with coverage of minute tactical plans in these states that don't contextualise the large socio-economic situation, here's a far-too-short primer:

• Goa is still grappling with its mining industry and what that means for the environment and people in the state.
• In Manipur, Irom Sharmila is still fasting and the state is still divided between its hills and its valleys. 
• Uttarakhand's economy has yet to recover from the cloudburst a few years ago and the subsequent drought years left its hillsides burning. 
• Punjab has seen a dangerous blurring of lines between politics and business, driving industry out of the state, while climate change stirs up unrest and drugs are still everywhere. 
• And then there is Uttar Pradesh. The state is facing a deadly drought. Communal tensions and crime remain sky-high, and will only get worse in an election year. And the economy is driving farmers to suicide.