A news channel van is the only indication that the drab three-storey yellow building isn’t just another house in Ghaziabad, just across the Delhi border, but is the office of a short, slightly-built 44-year-old, who’s been rattling heavyweight political parties for the past two weeks.

Three days after income tax officer-turned-activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal announced his formal political debut on October 2, he set the Congress dovecotes aflutter with allegations about UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra’s business dealings. A day later, he was climbing a ladder — “We want Jan Lokpal Bill” Gandhi cap firmly on his head — and restoring the electricity connection of a labourer, whose supply had been cut for non-payment of bills. “A man who earns Rs 300 a day gets a bill for Rs 15,000 for two months, how will he survive,” Kejriwal wants to know.

We are sitting in a room on the first floor in the evening after his electricity restoration outing. A few tables and plastic chairs give it an appearance of a room used for meetings. The waiting hall outside too has a spartan, chaotic look about it. Pamphlets are piled against one wall. Gandhi caps are being counted and packed on one table. Casually dressed young men and women work furiously on laptops or answer mobile phones that are constantly ringing.

People are trooping in to meet Kejriwal and the young volunteers are apologetically turning them away. There are two young men from Himachal Pradesh and Assam and another 20-something who has come with his Bermuda shorts-clad wife and little daughter to hand over a cheque and is promptly given a receipt.

Since that day, he’s levelled more charges at Vadra and law minister Salman Khurshid and led a rally to the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission. The electricity distribution company has filed FIRs against those whose electricity was restored. And questions are being raised whether all this is just publicity-seeking gimmickry.

This is a challenge to the way politics is currently being conducted, he counters. Why hasn’t the BJP taken up either of these issues? “They create a façade of opposition and do a tamasha about stalling Parliament. But there is a very good understanding among all parties that they won’t target individuals from the other party and will let everyone enjoy the fruits of power. We want to change that.” He lifts his feet off the floor and sits cross-legged on the chair for the rest of the time.

Politics, he says, isn’t just about elections but about forcing existing parties to change their conduct. His yet-to-be-named party will open a bank account and start disclosing every single donation on its website and then ask other parties why they didn’t do the same.

“Every single day we are going to challenge their politics. That is why we have entered politics — to revolutionise Parliament.”

He certainly seems to have needled the BJP, which is now asking — albeit guardedly — for the charges against Vadra to be investigated. Yet, he can’t escape the label of a BJP plant. “The Congress calls me a BJP agent, the BJP calls me a Congress agent,” he shrugs and points out that before targeting Vadra, the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement (from which his party has sprung) had raised questions about BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s involvement in Maharashtra’s irrigation scam. Was it just to present a neutral image? “We are targeting corruption wherever it happens. We are not doing it to show anyone.”

There’s a no-question-can-rattle-me air about him and even critical questions are answered with a practised ease that some experienced politicians lack.

The political debut shows how far this son of an engineer has come from his younger days growing up as a middle-class boy in small towns in north India, when he showed no interest in activism. Focused on his studies — in Campus School in Hissar and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur — he joined Tata Steel in 1989, but quit soon after to appear for the civil service examinations. While he was waiting for his interview call for the services, he met Mother Teresa in Calcutta and offered to be a volunteer. “That was the best part of my life — I travelled, learnt a lot.”

In 1992, he joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and was posted to the income tax department, which has a reputation of being a hotbed of corruption. But he was very happy there. “In many departments, the bribe travels from bottom to top and if you are a hindrance in between it is difficult for you to survive. But in income tax if you are honest, you can survive and be happy. No one will trouble you because of that.”

It was here that his tryst with anti-corruption began. He and some friends initiated a campaign against bribes in the department. While he remained in the background, his friends assisted people who were being asked for bribes to get their tax-related work done. Two years later, they stopped that. “I was scared the department would come down heavily on me.”

He then outed himself as an anti-corruption crusader and, along with his friends, started taking up issues relating to the then Delhi Electrical Supply Undertaking, the public distribution system and water privatisation in Delhi.

His family — parents and wife Sunita, an IRS official who was his batchmate — was worried at his risking a secure job, especially when he took two years’ study leave in 2000 to set up his non-government organisation, Parivartan, and work in Delhi’s slums taking on the ration shop mafia. After all he had two children to look after, a daughter and a son (now in Classes XII and VI, respectively). Relatives said he had lost his mind but that changed when he got the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006 for his work in those very slums. “One of my uncles then said, kuch to kar raha hoga (he must be doing something).”

That’s when he formally resigned from the IRS and used the prize money to set up the Public Cause Research Foundation, a voluntary organisation working on participatory governance and the right to information. It was during his work in slum clusters that he came in touch with information rights activist Aruna Roy, who, he says, is the biggest influence in his life after Gandhi. “She is upset with me now, I don’t know why,” he says and it’s clear that it troubles him.

Also unhappy with him is Anna Hazare (another major influence), who initially backed the idea of a political party and then distanced himself from it. Did the flip-flop come as a surprise? “I don’t want to talk about the past.” But he does admit that the lack of Hazare’s active involvement is a huge setback.

Wasn’t the displeasure of former associates understandable, since the anti-corruption movement had always derided the existing political system and culture? “We were forced into politics. We never wanted to get into politics. We are not politicians.” But the struggle for the Jan Lokpal legislation convinced him that this could not be achieved without getting into politics. “We tried protests, gheraos, hunger strikes. Politics is just another tool.”

Fighting elections, however, requires funds — far more than what donations from the public can bring — and a strong organisation, both of which the fledgling party lacks. “We will not fight elections with huge funds. We want to change the rules of the game.” Established parties need huge funds, he says, because they don’t have dedicated volunteers fired with the spirit of patriotism, which his party has. The lack of an organisation, he admits, is a huge weakness which they are trying to address.

Can a party survive with a single-point agenda — anti-corruption? The agenda is actually democracy, he says. “Voting once in five years is not democracy. It is about people’s participation in the decision-making process on a day-to-day basis.” He doesn’t think that the party’s vision of direct democracy is unrealistic, with its vision document talking about people’s consent being taken for all laws.

That doesn’t mean direct participation on all issues, he hastens to explain. People will have a say on matters related to their immediate locality. At the state and central level, there will be issues that the respective governments will decide. “Currently over-centralisation is the root cause of corruption.”

In their scheme of things, whatever can be done at the lowest level will be done there. “There are so many models available in history and across the world. We can find one for India.”

He gets excited talking about a political feature called referendum (where people can vote on a law passed by the legislature) and initiatives (where people initiate legislation). “Among all the democracies in the world referendum and initiatives do not exist only in five. And one of them is India.” Which are the others? “I don’t know. Prashant (Bhushan, lawyer and fellow activist) has all the data,” he says without missing a beat.

And what is the party’s line on foreign policy, economic policy and the like? It hasn’t come close to crystallising a position. “In most parties five people sitting in a room decide on a party’s stand. We will prepare a draft document, put contrary views as well and then put it in the public domain to initiate a debate.”

There’s a lot he can be challenged on and he’s in the mood to debate but restive journalists waiting outside have sent the media co-ordinator inside twice. And as I leave, the phones are still ringing and visitors still trooping in to meet Arvindji.