Game of Thrones

When he came together with Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan to found the Aam Aadmi Party, Yogendra Yadav was an unlikely revolutionary. Today, he is an unlikely politician, and that was evident in his conversation on the Algebra stage – a man whose intellect is more than equal to the task of governance, but whose instinct for integrity, for fairness, for democracy seems at odds with the grandstanding that politics necessitates.

Yet, Yogendra has made a commitment to creating a new politics, and if the AAP experiment has soured for him personally, it has not left him bitter – there was no takedown of Arvind Kejriwal, no rancor against his friends-turned-foes, but a steely intent to build on what he has learnt, to sidestep what he cannot change, and to construct the change he can.

And he was astute enough, halfway through the conversation, to laugh at himself and say – you’re not going to go back after this conversation with tomorrow’s headline. You’re going to go away thinking, that’s a sensible chap.

Yogendra was being self-deprecating. But it was a gentle mocking of us all, who write off “sensible” – an unsexy but fundamental need in our fraught, fractured times – as a lesser achievement.

Watch the full session above.