So you know India goes to the polls this week, and you also know that no election in history has involved the political will of such a large amount of people (about 800 million voters). You are an Indophile and have a broad sense of the issues at stake, but you want to learn the fine grain of the subject; you want to move from being merely conversant to being impressively capable.

Well, good luck to you.

The Indian-democracy neophyte trying to improve her capabilities by carefully perusing Indian newspapers is swiftly frustrated on many levels. First, one is pitched headfirst into a sea of acronyms — the names of political parties (INC, BJP, AAP), political alliances (UPA, NDA), government programs (MGNREGA), even political scams (CWG). Some of these seem to have merely rhetorical meanings or, even worse, no meaning at all (what policy direction or focus could one extrapolate from "United Progressive Alliance"?).