Tag: India

India Uncorrupted?

 

iucCan the radical new “Party of the Common People” clean up Indian politics? As the largest democracy in the world goes to the polls, Mukti Jain Campion reports from Delhi on how the Aam Aadmi Party has put corruption under the spotlight. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  April 2014   BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Yogendra Yadav & Rajmohan Gandhi of AAP, Mukul Kesavan, Political Commentator, Suhel Seth, columnist and brand consultant, Anil Verma of the Association for Democratic Reform, Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal, JNU Centre for Law & Governance, Dr Mukulika Banerjee (London School of Economics), Arnab Goswami, top TV Current Affairs host

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Jugaad: The Rise of Frugal Innovation

 

jugMukti Jain Campion explores the new global interest in Indian-style ingenuity. She meets some of India’s most famous jugaad innovators and discovers how their ideas and products may soon be going global. These range from grassroots innovations such as the Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike adaptation that turns it into a plough, the clay fridge that doesn’t need electricity to products developed for cash-strapped consumers everywhere such as the Aakash, the world’s cheapest computer tablet. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast October  2013   BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion    Executive Producer Charles Miller

Radio Choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Daily Mail

Mukti Jain Campion makes really good radio programmes, ones that have an eye for a good story and an ear for the right way of telling it. – Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph

Like Another Mahabharata: Indian Soldiers in the Great War

 

lam“This is not a war. It is the ending of the world. This is just such a war as was related in the Mahabharata about our forefathers.” – an Indian soldier’s letter from the Western Front

On Remembrance Day Mukti Jain Campion pays tribute to the contribution of over a million men from the Indian subcontinent who volunteered to fight for the British in the First World War. A fascinating insight into the soldiers’ experiences on and off the battlefields of the Western Front comes from the poetic and poignant letters they wrote home. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast November 1999 BBC Radio 4 & November 2000 BBC World Service

 

The message powerfully and feelingly conveyed in Mukti Jain Campion’s documentary is that First World War historians have signally failed to acknowledge the part played by those Indian volunteers who fought on Britain’s side.  -Peter Davalle, The Times

 

Contributors include: Dr David Omissi, Professor Linda Colley, Dominic Rai, and Dominiek Dendooven

Letter readings by Vincent Ebrahim, Rez Kempton and Dev Sagoo.

Soldiers’ songs performed by Baluji Shrivastav and the Man Mela Theatre Company.

Producer  Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, The Scotsman, The Observer, Evening Standard, Time Out, Radio Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Photograph: IWM photos Q53887

Crossing the Black Waters

 

ctbwFrom the first sailing of its ships to India in 1607, the English East India Company began a movement of people, goods and ideas that has linked the imaginations and fortunes of the people of Britain and the Indian subcontinent for 400 years. Mukti Jain Campion explores the extraordinary social legacy of the Company and of the early travellers who crossed the kala pani, into the unknown. (3 x 28′)

First broadcast January 2002 BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Dr Huw Bowen, Dr Kate Teltscher, Rozina Visram, Professor Om Prakash, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Dr Laxshmi Subramanian, Dr Indira Ghose and Tapati Guha Thakurta.

Readers: Vincent Ebrahim, Christopher Holmes & Malindi O’Rorke

Producers Mukti Jain Campion & Chris Eldon Lee

 

A compelling listen – Paul Donovan, The Sunday Times

 

 1: Identity  How the Company changed the way Indians and Britons looked at themselves, and each other.

2: Sex  The Company’s role originated many of the enduring myths about each country’s sexual behaviour.

3: Wealth  How the Company changed the fortunes of millions of Indians and Britons.

Radio Choice: The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, Time Out, The Sunday Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

 

Man vs God

 

iqbalStoryteller Seema Anand explores Muhammad Iqbal’s epic poem Shikwa, one of the most famous and enduring works of Islamic literature. The poem is an extended and heartfelt complaint in lyrical Urdu about all the many ways in which God has let Muslims down. When it was first recited by Iqbal at a public gathering in Lahore in 1911, a fatwa was issued by Islamic scholars who were shocked by its seemingly outrageous impudence. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast March 2011 BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Professor Javed Majeed and Navid Akhtar

Readings by Sagar Arya, Saeed Jaffrey and Pervaiz Alam

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

Surgical Cuts

 

With the NHS facing unprecedented financial pressures, Radio 4 presents a season of special programmes examining how it can meet growing demand with greater efficiency.

Dr Devi ShettyIn the first programme Mukti Jain Campion reports from the Indian city of Bangalore, home to Narayana Hrudayalaya, one of the biggest cardiac hospitals in the world. Founded by NHS trained surgeon Dr Devi Shetty, it has been attracting global attention for its pioneering approach to delivering high quality affordable healthcare. Could its cost-cutting innovations offer any lessons for the NHS? (1 x 28′)

Hearing ear

First broadcast September 2013 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Nusrat Was My Elvis

 

imgoOn the 10th anniversary of Nusrat’s death, Navid Akhtar examines the musical legacy of his spiritual and musical hero: the hugely influential Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan whose haunting voice enraptured millions across the globe and who successfully collaborated with western musicians such as Peter Gabriel. Singer Jeff Buckley once told an audience at a concert in New York “Nusrat: he’s my Elvis” – before performing one of Nusrat’s songs in Urdu. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast August 2007 BBC Radio 4

Producers: Nikita Gulhane & Chris Eldon Lee

A little gem of a music programme – Patricia Wynn Davies, The Daily Telegraph

 

Contributors include: singer Peter Gabriel, musician and composer Nitin Sawhney, theatre director Jatinder Verma of Tara Arts, Mohammed Ayuub of Oriental Star Agencies, Thomas Brooman of WOMAD, Amanda Jones of Real World Records, Robert del Naja of Massive Attack and veteran Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan.

Radio Choice: The Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, The Times.

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Hearing ear

 

 

The New Global Indians

 

Prajit Datta with sculpture by Debanjan Roy Aicon Gallery MayfairThey’re smart, they’re ambitious and they’re everywhere. As India’s economy grows at an unparalleled rate, a highly mobile elite of professional Indians is making its mark across the world as engineers, bankers, entrepreneurs and executives at the very top of multinational companies. Mukti Jain Campion finds out what lies behind their success and the impact they are making in India as well as abroad. (3 x 28′)

First broadcast  March 2010 BBC Radio 4

illuminating and impressive – Chris Campling, The Times

 

1: Indians Shining

Equipped with the English language and higher degrees from top universities, their ambitions go far beyond being call centre operators or back office workers for the West. Instead they’re making it big as entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, as analysts and bankers on Wall Street and Canary Wharf, buying up British businesses and running global companies.

2: Uniquely Indian?

India has the largest number of illiterate people in the world, yet it also produces some of the most numerate and ambitious graduates at world-famous establishments such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). On a visit to the campus of IIT Kanpur during recruitment week we find out why the students there are so highly sought-after by multinational companies.

3: Payback

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described it as his country’s brain gain: the increasing number of successful expatriate Indians who are returning to India to start businesses and run philanthropic projects. Why is India now so attractive to them and what impact are they making?

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Executive Producer Charles Miller

Tagore at 150

 

tag

In the beautiful setting of Dartington Hall in Devon, poets, singers and ecologists gather to share their favourite Rabindranath Tagore verse at a festival to mark the 150th anniversary of the Bengali poet’s birth. Introduced by Satish Kumar, Artistic Director of the Festival who is a devotee of Tagore’’s ecological teachings as well as his poetry. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  July 2011     BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Modern translators of Tagore William Radice and Ketaki Kushari Dyson, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, singers Debashish and Rohini Raychaudhuri, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt and internationalist Clare Short .

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio choice: The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph

Sacred Election: Lessons from the biggest democracy in the world

 

7. After voting, man displays his finger marked with indelible inkIt’s the biggest single organised event in the world

714 million voters, 800,000 polling stations

7 million election officials and securuty forces

…and 1.2 million electronic voting machines

Hearing ear

 

 

Political anthropologist Dr Mukulika Banerjee of University College London goes behind the scenes of India’s 15th General Election to discover how the country manages to defy apparently insuperable odds to deliver an efficient voting process that is admired across the world and hears why so many ordinary Indians take such pride in voting. ( 1 x 37′)

First broadcast May 2009   BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Election Commissioner Dr SY Quraishi, political analyst Yogendra Yadav and veteran British psephologist Dr David Butler, and many voters around the country – from paddy farmers in West Bengal to slum dwellers in Mumbai.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent