<b>Mitali Saran:</b> Take me to your leader, if you can find one

India has any number of eager politicians, but few of them suffer from any symptoms of leadership. They tend to be too inarticulate, too dull, too distant, and too damn venal. Also, unlike most of the people, too damn fat. Most politicians remain varyingly successful representatives or policymakers or administrative managers. It takes a certain amount of charisma to make the transition from politician to leader.

The widespread yearning for Narendra Modi is merely a widespread yearning for leadership. He's a man of action, they say. Personally speaking, the hiss with which he ends all his sentences puts me right off my food. It's the sound of a rattlesnake stroking its own back. But biases apart, surely we can come up with a leader who doesn't wait a decade to express pain over the 2002 Gujarat riots, and then only the pain of his own "suffering"?
 

Delhi is particularly bereft of leaders we can connect with and call our own. It must be all the imperial bells and whistles - the massive bungalows, the wide avenues, the imposing architecture, the sandstone ramparts, the motorcades - oh, the motorcades… That's power, Delhi style. When you live behind these trappings, you don't have to be charismatic; you just need to keep breathing and not take too many questions. As long as high office is treated as its own end, it can get away with the most astonishing perversions of logic. Example: politicians named in the Adarsh report have been let off because one of them is a serving Union minister. Off with the heads of criminals, unless they're VIPs, in which case don't talk crazy like that.

All of this spells, not "serving", but "ruling". We not only haven't gotten past the language of the Raj, we positively cling to it, talking constantly about UPA/BJP rule at the centre, or Congress/BJP-ruled states. But it is entirely up to us to choose to speak like this or not. When was the last time you heard about an American president, or an American political party, "ruling" Washington?

In line with the language of imperial conquest rather than that of customer service, power is opaque and mostly hereditary. Naturally, then, accountability is a mere nothing, and charisma superfluous. Once you've gained a position, you don't have to be seen to deserve it much, between elections.

But India is fed up of low standards. Our expectations far outstrip our political class, which appears only now to be waking up to this fact. We expect not just politics, but accountable leadership. We're done with mystique.

Enter Arvind Kejriwal, washed into the Delhi Assembly as chief minster on a tide not just of voter frustration, but his own genuine talent for leadership. That talent is not based on how he looks (the scarf-and-cap combination headgear is cross-dresser chic at best) or how he sounds (hack cough sniffle hack hack are you really going to survive this winter?) but on what he says and how he says it.

Listen to his speech in the Delhi Assembly on the day the Aam Aadmi Party passed the floor test. Whether you agree with the man's thinking and agenda or not, you will notice that he radiates sincerity, integrity, a willingness to work hard (when his stomach allows), and a deep sympathy with the top favourite pet peeves of the Delhi voter. He cements this impression by leading by example. Rock star charisma might lie in seeming other-worldly, but political charisma lies in standing shoulder to shoulder with the electorate. Politicians survive on job designation. Leaders inspire hearts and minds, and elicit the best out of people.

It may be the case that Arvind Kejriwal will crash and burn this time around, shipwrecked on some of the shallows of his own agenda. But he has raised the bar for what a leader can and should be like. He's not so busy managing his brand that he ends up unable to speak. He's not insulated from the world by layers of security, or of pomp and ceremony. He's not of the view that you must have politician DNA in order to be a politician. He doesn't believe that you need a diploma in nation-building in order to build the nation. He's just a smart, fairly ordinary guy who decided to try, and see where it goes. The electrifying effects of his accessibility and communicativeness may well be behind the UPA top rung's sudden media-friendliness.

Mr Kejriwal has done something amazing: the obvious. Stop whining, roll up your sleeves, and walk the talk. Now it remains to be seen if he can keep his eye on the ball. I, for one, wish him the best.