India, Feb. 9 -- In the fog of winter in the Capital in 2011, a silhouette emerged - a bespectacled IIT Kharagpur graduate who eschewed his Indian Revenue Service position to find himself at the vanguard of India's most significant anti-corruption movement in four decades. With a basic ballpoint in his pocket, muffler wrapped around his neck, baggy sweaters and driving a blue Wagon R car, Arvind Kejriwal quickly caught the imagination of the middle-class as an archetypal common man.

As his then mentor Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement galvanised the youth, Kejriwal emerged as its chief strategist. In the sweltering heat of Ramlila Maidan, he transformed the arcane Jan Lokpal Bill into compelling street rhetoric. And when he announce...