Category: Current Affairs

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

Schumacher’s Big Society

 

smallbeautifulJonathon Porritt delves into the archives to assess the legacy of economist E.F. Schumacher on David Cameron’s ideas for the Big Society. Described as “one of the few original thinkers of the 20th Century”, Fritz Schumacher was the author of the seminal 1973 book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. The programme includes extracts from Schumacher’s 1976 speech to the Findhorn Community in Scotland. It was his last UK public lecture before his death, here digitally remastered and broadcast for the first time for Archive on 4. (1 x 57′)

First broadcast July 2011 BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Satish Kumar of Schumacher College and editor of Resurgence Magazine, George McCrobie co-founder of Practical Action, Wilfred Beckerman author of Small is Stupid and members of the Schumacher family.

Producer Chris Eldon Lee

Executive Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

Radio choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

 

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

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

Who’s Fit to be a Parent?

 

IMukti Jain Campions parenting a private matter or has it become too complex and too important a job to leave to parents alone? Mukti Jain Campion (author of Who’s Fit to be a Parent? Routledge 1995) examines the arguments for more state intervention in how parents raise the next generation of citizens. (1 x 39′)

First broadcast August 1995 BBC Radio 4

 

The programme discusses with subtlety and depth the many ways in which most people are unprepared for parenthood -Polly Toynbee, Radio Times

 

Contributors include: Christopher Clulow, Director of the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute; Gerison Lansdown, Director of the UK Children’s Rights Development Unit; Albert Solnit, Paediatrician, psychiatrist and former director of the Yale Child Studies Centre; Jill Hodges, Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Great Ormond Street;  Hugh LaFollette, Professor of Philosophy East Tennessee State University and author of Licensing Parents; David Townsend, Director of Social Services

Producers Mukti Jain Campion and Rachel Yorke

A co-production with Track Record

 

The Future is Halal

 

YNavid Halalou’ve heard of halal meat, but what about halal paintbrushes, halal perfume or halal holiday resorts? Navid Akhtar investigates the astonishing global rise of products and services specifically targeting Muslim consumers – who are predicted to make up 30% of the world’s population by 2025. (1 x 37′)

First broadcast August 2012 BBC Radio 4

 

 

Contributors include: Shelina Jan Mohammed, Abdalhamid Evans, Dr Mah Hussein-Gambles, Daud Vicary, Peter Gould, Dr Karim Douglas Crow, Fazal Bahardeen and Jumatuun Azmi.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Guardian Guide , The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday, The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Move Over Wodehouse

India’s English-speaking middle class is expanding fast and expected to reach 500 million by 2025. It represents a dream market for publishers and one that is set to become the biggest in the world. So what books are Indians reading? How are the perennial classics such as Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse faring against the emerging Indian authors? And what does it take to become a bestseller in India? Mukti Jain Campion reports from the Jaipur Literature Festival and from Trivandrum in Kerala, India’s most literate state. (1 x 28′)

The programme was full of humour, interest and symbolic import – D J Taylor, The Tablet

First broadcast   May 2012 BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: best-selling authors Jeffrey Archer, Chetan Bhagat, William Dalrymple, Jaishree Misra and Tarun Tejpal.

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Sunday Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

The secret to writing a bestseller in India

Read DJ Taylor’s Tablet Review

One Billion Digitally Identified Indians

 

obdiiIndia is rolling out the largest and most technologically ambitious national identity scheme in the world. It aims to enrol each of the country’s billion residents with a unique identity number using biometric data from their fingerprint and iris scans.

Mukti Jain Campion reports from India on the hopes and fears sparked by the scheme and the global interest it has attracted.  (1 x 28′)

First broadcast July 2013 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion    Executive Producer Charles Miller

Radio Choice: The Radio Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, The Observer

Hearing ear

Reclaiming the Swastika

 

RECLAIMING THE SWASTIKA

A symbol of fascism or a universal sign for good luck?  Mukti Jain Campion uncovers the long history of the swastika and examines calls for it to be reclaimed from its Nazi links. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast October 2014 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

fair, fascinating and exemplary – Paul Donovan, The Sunday Times

 

Radio Choice: The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer and Radio Times

BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week

You can see the swastikas discussed in the programme

Read BBC News article   How the world loved the swastika – until Hitler stole it

Hearing ear

I’m A Muslim, Get Me Out of Here!

 

NavidNavid Akhtar investigates the growing phenomenon of  middle class British Muslims who are contemplating leaving the UK to escape rising Islamophobia and meets some of the thousands who have already relocated to Islamic countries. (1 x 37′)

First broadcast April 2007   BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

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

Read Elizabeth Mahoney’s Review in The Guardian