Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

ReutersA magazine stand on a railway platform in Mumbai.

As India’s rival national parties, the incumbent Congress and the principal opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, begin preparing for the general elections scheduled for 2014, Open Magazine’s Jatin Gandhi analyzes the country’s potential choices for prime minister: Narendra Modi, the controversial chief minister of Gujarat, who was welcomed amid feverish chants of “P.M.! P.M.!” at his party’s New Delhi office last month, and Rahul Gandhi, the 42-year-old heir apparent of the Gandhi dynasty, who took charge last week as vice president of the Congress party.

In the cover sory, titled “Devil’s Alternative,” the author writes:

“The din around their PMs-in-waiting pretty much sums up the current situation in the two parties. It is called the TINA factor in politics: There Is No Alternative. It’s Rahul Gandhi for the Congress, Narendra Modi for the BJP. Neither party can afford to pick any other candidate.”

The author scrutinizes the political pitches of the two leaders: Mr. Modi’s promise of economic prosperity through the “Gujarat model” of development, and Mr. Gandhi’s vision for systemic change in a knowledge-based, youth-driven country. “Rahul Gandhi is the Congress’ and Narendra Modi the BJP’s idea of ‘change,’” Jatin Gandhi writes. But, he argues in the piece, in Indian politics, the more things change, the more choice-less it gets.

“At first glance, a new set of party leaders denotes a shift, but take a closer look and you know that t! he two leading political parties (with 60 per cent of all Lok Sabha seats between them) have more or less the same political stereotypes to offer.”

India Today magazine, too, writes about a leadership crisis in the country. Relying on a “Mood of the Nation” poll, the writer, S. Prasannarajan, opines that the ruling coalition, helmed by the Congress party, has “lost India,” and the opposition, led by the B.J.P., is “caught in an existential crisis,” making way for regional parties “whose idea of India is smaller than their satrapies.”

This cover story, which carries images of Rahul Gandhi in a crisp white kurta and Narendra Modi in a saffron scarf, carries the caption: The UPA’s untested Rahul Gandhi and the NDA’s unanointed Narendra Modi rise above the rest, but India remains unled.

“On the eve of another Generl Election, Battlefield India, strewn with cracked icons and smashed reputations, tests the patience of one of the world’s most unforgiving democracies,” it says. “India is waiting to be led.”

Shooting by armed forces across the de facto border between India and Pakistan, known as the Line of Control, and the beheading of an Indian soldier this month, tested the fragile peace between the rival neighbors, threatening to cancel out the small but significant gains the countries have made since the Mumbai attacks in November 2008.

An article in Frontline looks at India and Pakistan’s fraught border relations, analyzing the cease-fire agreement that has been in place, largely successfully, since 2003. “The recent incidents have been the most serious in the last decade,” the article says.

The author, John Cherian, notes that as news of the violence emerged, the Indian and Pakistani governments first ex! pressed h! ope that the incidents would not adversely impact bilateral relations between the nations. He then examines how a jingoistic Indian news media and right-wing opposition parties “forced the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to toughen its stance.”

“But better sense seems to have prevailed,” he writes, “after a week of sabre-rattling on both sides.”