Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

ReutersA magazine stand on a railway platform in Mumbai.

Gujarat's divisive chief minister Narendra Modi surprised no one when he won a resounding victory in the recent state elections, inching closer, some say, to fulfilling his ambitions of becoming a national leader, perhaps even prime minister. But what remains surprising and even inscrutable to some is the fervent support the right-wing politician enjoys on his home turf and elsewhere.

In a cleverly crafted piece in Open magazine titled “The Cult of NaMo,” Hartosh Singh Bal, who has been critical of Mr . Modi's governance, attempts to decipher the Modi phenomenon. He begins his story with a powerful scene: a skit performed by Arvind Vegda, an entertainer hired by Mr. Modi for campaign events in rural Gujarat, that riffs on a scene from a popular Indian movie, Deewaar.

In the skit, a Congress voter says: “I have a car, cheap medicine, a Chinese laptop and free electricity, what do you have? “Mere paas Modi hai,” a supporter of Mr. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party promptly responds. (“I have Modi.”)

“It would be laughable,” Mr. Bal writes, “if this were said of any other politician in any other state of India.

“Here, however, it summed up the campaign-the overarching image of Modi decimating the offer of freebies that had won so many recent elections in other parts of the country. But the subtext that actually allowed Vegda's skit to work went beyond the campaign. In Gujarat, the old ‘maibaap'” â€" benefactor â€" “idea of government has become embodied in one man, Modi, 62. Everything stems from him.”

The story, full of revelatory details about the life and times of Mr. Modi, introduces its readers to many who hero-worship him. It also shows us Mr. Modi himself, a master strategist who works meticulously to craft his public image.

In another story that focuses on Mr. Modi's political gambit, Outlook magazine looks ahead to 2014, when India is scheduled to hold its next general elections.

The author, Saba Naqvi, asks: Is Mr. Modi's bid for the nation's top job “just an outrageous, unrealistic proposition given national realities?   Or is it an audacious plan by a man who has successfully executed many in the past?

“Even the prospect of Modi attempting it is significant and has become the single issue around which the politics of other players would be determined,” Ms. Naqvi writes. “Even if he were to remain the Man-Who-Could-Not-Be-PM, he will still make us stop in our tracks, watch the man make his attempt and wonder if he would stop and turn the history of the nation.”

Television news channels, print media, blogs, Twitter, banners and letters have been filled with outrage over the Dec. 16 gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi.

Tehelka, which in April exposed the retrograde attitudes of scores of police officers toward crimes against women, dwells on India's response in a piece titled “The Rapes Go On. How Do We?”

“The words are getting worn now,” it begins.

The rape was horrific, heartbreaking, the criminals are monstrous, animals, the administration is apathetic, inadequate, the punishment should be castration, lobotomy. Tehelka's past coverage of Delhi police's response to rape gutted any vestige of faith in the system to redress, much less protect against or deter gender crimes - because rape is never just about sex. This, despite the implementation of gender sensitization training modules for cops in the capital over a decade ago, which petered out in the absence of political will.

“Can nothing change?” Tehelka asks, even as outraged Indians gather for clamorous protests across Delhi, from police stations and the chief minister's house to Jantar Mantar and India Gate, demanding swift justice and better security.

“What happens then to the outrage we feel when a 23-year-old paramedical student from Dehradun is raped by six men on a bus, hammered with an iron rod, and tossed out on the road to die? Does the anger and anguish get lost in the warp of our social fabric, too slender a skein to assert itself?” the magazine asks.

The piece identifies five rea sons why women in India will continue to be targeted - from a deeply rooted misogyny to a thoroughly ineffective justice system - and suggests five ways in which things can change.