Stirring the Pot and Striking Fear in India

NEW DELHI

Arvind Kejriwal, center, has become an unlikely bomb thrower in Indian politics.

HUNDREDS of reporters stood waiting, everyone expecting a helping of scandal, and Arvind Kejriwal did not disappoint. He pushed past the television cameras, smiling slyly in his white Gandhian cap, and took a seat on the podium. The crowd pressed forward, drawn by the question now shaking India's political establishment: Who will Arvind go after next?

Slight and bespectacled, with a neatly trimmed mustache, Mr. Kejriwal, 44, could be mistaken for a bookkeeper, rather than what he has become - the unlikely bomb thrower of Indian politics. His recent appearance was one of his staged media spectacles, in which he has produced documents and leveled corruption charges at some of India's most powerful political figures. Corruption, he argues, corrodes all the political parties in a fundamentally compromised system.

His solution? The formation of a new political party, in time for national elections in 2014.

“We hope that the people of this country will be able to do something in 2014,” Mr. Kejriwal said.

That Mr. Kejriwal is now one of India's most powerful figures represents a strikingly swift turnaround. Only months ago, conventional wisdom held that he was finished politically. He had been the mastermind of the huge anticorruption movement that last year shook the country - but had then seemed to miscalculate.

First, the movement fizzled. Then, earlier this year, his alliance shattered with Anna Hazare, the hunger striker and symbol of the movement: Mr. Hazare unexpectedly balked over plans to form a political party.

Politicos snickered that Mr. Kejriwal's party, without Mr. Hazare, would be dead before it was born. Mr. Kejriwal, the backstage manager, would now be the public face, which raised a question: Would ordinary Indians rally behind a party whose public draw was a wiry, intense former tax examiner? That remains to be seen, but no one is snickering at Mr. Kejriwal any longer.

Instead, he is feared. He has accused Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, the country's most powerful politician, of reaping millions in improper real estate deals. He has delved into the business dealings of Nitin Gadkari, leader of the main opposition party. He has alleged improprieties in a charity for the handicapped run by the family of Salman Khurshid, the country's new foreign minister - prompting a barely veiled threat from Mr. Khurshid.

In some instances, he is merely resurrecting and amplifying existing accusations. Yet, through it all, Mr. Kejriwal has steadily pushed his simple, if radical, message: India's democracy, the largest in the world, does not merely need reform. India needs a revolution.

IT is Sunday night, three days after Mr. Kejriwal's news conference on Oct. 25. His target that day was Reliance Industries Ltd., India's most powerful corporation, which he accused of exerting political influence to bilk billions of dollars on natural gas contracts. (On Friday, Mr. Kejriwal held another news conference, this time accusing Mukesh Ambani, the owner of Reliance, and others of illegally stashing money overseas.)

Reliance has denied the charges - as have all of his targets - but Mr. Kejriwal seemed pleased. The establishment has been rattled.

Now Mr. Kejriwal sat inside a cramped conference room of his headquarters, in a small house at the edge of the capital, beside a dingy slum. He was engaged in a ritual of Indian politics: the public audience. One man had traveled hundreds of miles to pledge his support. Another unexpectedly started singing a tribute song. A father and mother presented their 10-year-old son as a future foot soldier in Mr. Kejriwal's efforts.

“After seeing you,” the boy's mother said, “I have the courage that now we can raise our voices.”

Mr. Kejriwal grew up in the city of Hisar, in the northern state of Haryana, the son of an engineer. Like many ambitious Indians, his parents wanted him to become a doctor or an engineer, and the young Mr. Kejriwal studied obsessively to gain entrance to India's most prestigious engineering school. After graduation, he worked for three years as a mechanical engineer before testing into India's elite civil service as a tax examiner.

It would change his life. He met his wife, another tax examiner, but also found himself confronted with rampant bribe-taking. “There was corruption at every stage,” Mr. Kejriwal recalled.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 10, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Stirring the Pot and Striking Fear in India.