Shekhar Gupta: Start-up of the decade

AAP has managed to break through entry barriers for newcomers in our politics - caste, ethnicity, ideology, dynasty - to establish itself as a Delhi party with all-India recognition

This has been a decade of start-ups. Hundreds of new ones have emerged and more than a dozen have achieved “Unicorn” status (valuation at more than a billion dollars) in quick time.

Our vantage point, however, is political. So, in our book, the political start-up of the decade was Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Here are the many reasons why.

First, with established political parties and caste-ethnic-ideological forces with ossified vote banks and entrenched dynasties, the entry barriers for newcomers in our politics are the steepest. That’s why start-ups of the past — from the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra