AAP & DOWN:An Insider?s Story of India?s Most Controversial Party

‘In the first NC meeting after AAP’s creation, Arvind had said: “This party is not the property of 300 founding members but of the lakhs and crores of people in this country.” This refreshing stance shifted over time, got corrupted by power . . . till, one day, Arvind told me: I do not want intellectuals in the party, just people who say “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.’ Authored by a former member of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) National Executive, AAP and Down is an in-depth account of the emergence and sudden unspooling of one of India’s most closely watched parties. The story of AAP is one of troughs and crests. After capturing the imagination of over a billion Indians and winning a landslide victory in the 2015 Delhi elections, a seemingly indestructible party began to dangerously teeter. What just happened? How did a party—born of the idealistic India Against Corruption (IAC) movement—