The meteoric rise of the Aam Aadmi Party—from inception to running the state of Delhi in thirteen months—is a story with three principal strands. First, Arvind Kejriwal; iconoclast, leader, and disrupter par excellence, who has dared to defy the fundamental templates of Indian politics and governance. Second, the coalescing of a group of unprecedented diversity—a journalist, a lawyer, an academic, a policymaker, a CEO, a retired NSG commando, an architect, and a poet, among many others—on the streets of New Delhi, all bound together by a shared idea of an India that could have been. And, third, of the awakening of the aam aadmi, and of his realization that he can be as active a participant and change-maker in national politics as any other.

In The Disrupter, Gautam Chikermane and Soma Banerjee provide an in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of how these three strands came together to create a brand-new political tapestry. And how a single political party shattered the status quo; captivated the imagination of the citizenry, taking people beyond the usual cynical labels of caste and creed; and changed the contemporary political narrative in ways that are both unthinkable and unpredictable.