Jagdeep Singh Chhokar, at the age of 80, is the grand old man of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which has waged many a battle for making our democracy transparent. It was to satisfy my curiosity as to why a retired management professor took to the task of reforming democracy that I met Chhokar. “My life has many twists,” he said.

He was once in the Indian Railways where, one day, he bumped into a colleague who was on his way to attend an MBA class. What’s this MBA, he asked. An explanation later, Chhokar enrolled, in 1974, at Delhi’s Faculty of Management Studies for its evening course. Wishing to stay in Delhi until his wife completed her MPhil-PhD, he opted for a deputation to a public sector undertaking. A management trainee there pestered Chhokar to apply for a PhD course abroad, even getting him addresses of American universities. To get the boy off his back, Chhokar applied.