AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal at a public meeting in Delhi on December 22 AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal at a public meeting in Delhi on December 22

Kejriwal fasting in April to lower electricity and water tariffs in Delhi Kejriwal fasting in April to lower electricity and water tariffs in Delhi

Campaigning for Assembly polls in October Campaigning for Assembly polls in October

Kejriwal outside the Delhi Lieutenant Governor's office on December 23 Kejriwal outside the Delhi Lieutenant Governor's office on December 23

Angry nations don't behave badly. When the ravages of remorseless power drive them to the brink, they refuse to give in to the fate of the defeated and the beaten. They revolt.They rise against the perversions and pathologies, the lies and evasions, of those who were sworn to be the custodians of their destiny but turned out to be the masters of their misfortune. When anger erupts from the recesses of a nation hurt, the last facade of pretence crumbles and the enormity of the rot at the highest echelons accelerates the urge for change. In the evolutionary history of nations, such moments are reaped by the outsider untainted by the dirt of the system, by the insurgent who has internalised the rage of the street, by the usurper who has shattered the idyll of politics-as-usual. The India of 2013 was angry, and its impatience for freedom from the discredited political class was wearing thin.As the calcified totems of status quo sank deeper into irrelevance, unaware of the stirrings of mortality around them, there emerged in the politics of India a space for a cleanser, a debunker, a new kind of politician-the Inevitable Other. Inevitable because the familiar choices, whether on the Left or Right, were too cautious to repudiate the tradition of entitlement or the straitjacket of ideology, particularly so in the case of India's oldest party which was undergoing an intercellular disintegration. The Indian National Congress, on the Left of centre, rhymed with stasism and stagnation, and the Central government it sustained became immune to the disillusion swirling in the streets and in the drawing rooms of India. The cosy comfort zone of Raisina Hill was historyproof.On the right, the cult of the nationalist rearmed became bigger than his party-and anti-Congressism's most successful beneficiary. The Little Man, the Ordinary Man, had to emerge from somewhere other than the mean streets of mainstream politics. And it happened. With iron in his soul and anger in his eyes, hope in his words and quiet determination in his gait, Arvind Kejriwal, the bespectacled Everyman, aged forty-five, weighing sixty-six kilograms, height five ft four inch, his pedigree, main hoon aam aadmi (I'm an ordinary man), written on his trademark white cap, stormed into national conscience-and into power.Few fairy tales are written in such a short span of national memory; fewer narratives of heroism in a democracy have reached a finale as inspiring as this one in the mythology of resistance. In the beginning, in the republic of shifting smokescreens, this former income tax officer was a fighter for the Right to Information, and it was then he realised that truth is power. Later, he became the first lieutenant of the portly satyagrahi who led the anti-corruption movement that swayed the mind of the young and the angry; at the feet of Anna Hazare, he mastered the first lessons of mobilisation. So far, the story of Kejriwal was a negation of politics; a rejoinder to the mounting immoralities of politics. The creation of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) marked the amateur's arrival in the arena of professionals, a daring foray into what Vaclav Havel, a pioneer in the history-shifting romance of the amateurs' rebellion, had called "anti-political politics". The great Czech defined it as "politics from below. Politics of man, not of apparatus.Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis". In what was probably Delhi's last winter of discontent, the apolitical politician riding the magic broom of civic salvation was the one who won the argument: His sensational debut in the Delhi Assembly polls was a veto on the waywardness of the Establishment.The street fighter has come a long way in his struggle against power. Today, he embodies the power of the ordinary, or what Havel would have called "the power of the powerless", of "living within truth". The ideal of Kejriwal is everything politics as usual is not. When opacity is the abiding cultural trait of the ruling class, he talks transparency and accountability. When the absolutism of the High Command is unquestionable in governance, he spreads the gospel of decentralisation and swaraj, which also happens to be the title of his book. It is a user's guide to "power from below", written as a manifesto for the Anna movement. "The democracy that exists in India today will have to change. Democracy should mean that for the five years after the vote is cast, the government functions according to the wishes of the people, and the views of the people are taken into account before making decisions.Is this possible? Can the government ask for the approval of 1.2 billion people before taking a decision? It definitely can," he writes. The ordinariness of his narrative style may be in tune with the author's persona, but the words exude the saboteur's spirit. When political power in India is a licence for the elected to set themselves apart from the hoi polloi, he promises an end to the pomp. He embodies, in the words of Yogendra Yadav, political scientist and the philosopher in the court of Kejriwal, "extraordinary ordinariness".When India Today meets the amazing aam aadmi at his fourth-floor flat in Girnar Apartments in Ghaziabad, just outside Delhi, the ordinariness that strikes you is, well, extraordinary. There he is, sitting cross-legged on a sofa, deconstructing yet another compilation of Delhi's misadministration, a small audience of acolytes nodding in approval to the master's wisdom. On the walls are framed scenic kitsch and the portraits of the man himself, but more revealing are the titles on the bookshelf in the corner. Among them: Leader's Guide; Top of Everything 2013; Establishment and Administration; and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. The eclecticism of his collection perhaps sums up the mind and methods of the man who has assigned himself the mission of sweeping the system clean. Ask him about the transition, from a street fighter against power to a politician in power and he answers as if he is reading from a prerecorded text: "Life remains the same for me. It has always been a battle against injustice and corruption. Methods may change, strategies may change, but the battle goes on." "Is it possible to carry the same struggle even when you are in power?""Of course. When you say you are in power, it depends on how you look at power. If power is responsibility, the struggle against injustice will continue. If power is perks, you become the problem. Others will have to fight against you." "Now that the romance of the street fighter is over, are you prepared for the harsh reality of realpolitik?" "It has never been a romance for us. There was a sense of responsibility at every stage. If it was a romance, we would have given up and gone home as soon as the anti-corruption movement we were leading was over. We were at the height of our glory then. When we formed a political party, we were branded as power hungry. We put our image at stake. No, it is not a case of romance then and responsibility now.""Still, how are you going to strike a balance between the idea of resistance and the reality of governance?" "Frankly, we don't have a magic wand. We have no such grand notion that we'll change everything once in power. But we are confident that if we involve the entire one-and-a-half-crore people in Delhi, there won't be any problem that we can't solve. There won't be the ruler and the ruled. Now every single person in Delhi will become a government. We will change the definition of government.""To achieve true decentralisation, the core of your thinking, what is the best option for you- restoration of our damaged institutions or dismantling them?" "There are some institutions which need to be strengthened, and there are some which need to be done away with, and some need to be created.""Can you specify?" "CAG is a good institution. Judiciary needs to be strengthened. Lokpal is a necessary new institution we have to create. For decentralisation, we have to form mohalla sabhas and gram sabhas. Right now, I can't think of specific institutions that have become redundant and therefore need to be junked." "You love the idea of referendum. Do you really think that consensus is the best way to take decisions by a government, to lead?" "I'm not saying that you can run a government by referendum. But once in a year, or once in two years, people need to be consulted on big decisions. And I disagree with the notion that unpopular decisions can't be taken through referendums. The only condition is that we have to put all the pros and cons before the people with utmost honesty."Kejriwal in conversation is animated honesty, and frighteningly, his words are free of doubt; his never-fading beatific smile conveys an unshakeable faith in the righteousness of his mission, as if it is the call of karma that drives him. "Yes, I believe in karma. During my IIT days, when it was all about scientific temperament, I was an agnostic. In the last three years I have become a believer again. When our movement became so big, I realised how small we were. Something divine happened. It's a spiritual journey for us now." The faithful may even argue that Kejriwal's journey was as miraculous as walking on the muddied waters of Indian politics.His theology of liberation, though, is a blend of socialist dogmatism and libertarian recklessness, of anarchic adventurism and Manichean morality, of Gandhian resistance and Marxian subversion. In his India, the village is the highest parliament, the mob is the last receptacle of truth, and in the marketplace, it is not competition but equality that matters. The broom, the topi, the referendum-the struggle and triumph of Kejriwal too vindicate that kitsch is the aesthetics of social-justice politics.In the end, it was the just war of the ordinary man, and he is still determined to remain ordinary: "It is impossible for me to be otherwise." And it is impossible for those who have turned politics into a malpractice of democracy to remain in their make-believe of infallibility. For instilling the fear of extinction in the malignant majority of Indian politics, for making the struggle for power as noble as the struggle against power, for uniting the affluent and the dispossessed in a common fight against the profanities of power, for leading a new freedom struggle, for turning politics on its head, Arvind Kejriwal, the newly minted ruler as rebel, is INDIA TODAY'S Newsmaker of 2013.