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India's caste quota controversy May 08, 2019

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Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tinkering with the reservation system nothing more than a bid to grab votes in the general election?

India has long had a system of positive discrimination to enable people from lower castes to get political representation, government jobs and university places. But as Rahul Tandon reports, the Prime Minister's decision to broaden the quotas to include anyone from an economically deprived background, irrespective of caste, has proved divisive among voters.

Ed Butler speaks to Ashwini Deshpande, economics professor at Ashoka University, who claims that Modi's move won't even help the underprivileged group it purports to. Plus former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, gives his considered opinion of the successes and failures of five years of economic policy under Modi.

(Picture: An Indian voter queues to cast her vote; Credit: Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images)

Netflix moves into Africa May 07, 2019

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The video streaming service Netflix has announced a major push into Africa, with original series commissioned from around the continent.

Netflix had already commissioned its first Nigerian original movie with 2018’s Lionheart, and a number of new projects have been announced, including the Zimbabwean musical animation Tunga. Ed Butler speaks to screenwriter Godwin Jabangwe about how he based it on the legends he heard as a child. Meanwhile Mahmoud Ali Balogun, a veteran Nollywood filmmaker, explains why he thinks Netflix will be good for the country's content creators.

It won’t necessarily be smooth sailing for Netflix, however, as high data costs and poor connectivity mean many African viewers won’t get the same experience as those in more developed regions. Ed speaks to South African media analyst Arthur Goldstuck, and Hassana, a young Netflix user in north-western Nigeria.

(Picture: the Netflix logo; Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

The price of bread May 06, 2019

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This global food staple used to account for half of some people's income. Dr Kaori O’Connor a food anthropologist at University College, London, explains how it became central to so many of our diets. Plus we’ll hear from Dominique Anract, President of the National Confederation of French Bakers who explains some of the rules of the bread industry. Renowned chef, Francisco Migoya tells us about recreating Roman loaves, and we hear from James Slater from Puratos who uses ancient grains to develop modern flours. Kevan Roberts spills the secrets of gluten-free baking and consultant Azmina Govindji tells us that carbs are not an evil that needs to be avoided.

The value of domestic work May 03, 2019

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Housework and caring - is technology about to transform this essential but overlooked part of the economy?

Manuela Saragosa speaks to Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in the US about why workers in the home still aren't valued, and to Megan Stack, author of Woman's Work, about the power employers have over domestic help. Professor Diane Coyle from the University of Cambridge explains why domestic work often isn't included in GDP figures.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

A four-day week? May 02, 2019

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The campaign for a four-day working week is gaining traction, particularly in the UK. Manuela Saragosa hears from Lorraine Gray, operations director at Pursuit Marketing, a company that has already made the switch from five to four days. But Ed Whiting, policy director at the charity Wellcome Trust, explains why they decided against the change after a major consultation. Asheem Singh, director of economy at the Royal Society of Arts, warns that a shift to a four-day week could result in a two-tier economy.

(Photo: A pin placed in a calendar, Credit: Getty Images)

The mega factory that never was May 01, 2019

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Foxconn is causing a political headache for President Trump, as the Taiwanese manufacturer fails to deliver on a promise to build a 13,000-employee factory in Wisconsin.

The LCD screen plant - which was intended to hire 13,000 local blue collar workers - was heralded by the US president as a win in his struggle to return manufacturing jobs to America. But while the Wisconsin authorities have spent millions of dollars preparing the ground, Foxconn itself has obfuscated.

Ed Butler investigates what went wrong, and what it says more broadly about President's Trump's ambition to revitalise the US manufacturing sector. The programme includes journalist Josh Dzieza of The Verge, Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih, and chief economist Megan Greene of Manulife Asset Management.

(Foxconn CEO Terry Gou (L) at the groundbreaking for the Foxconn computer screen plant in Mt Pleasant, Wisconsin, in June 2018; Credit: Andy Manis/Getty Images)

What young Indians want Apr 30, 2019

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As India holds elections, getting decent jobs is top of the agenda for most young voters, as the BBC's Rahul Tandon discovers.

Most Indians still live in rural areas, and on a trip to the village of Burul just outside Kolkata, Rahul hears the fears of students at a local high school at their lack of meaningful career prospects. Employment could be a key factor in deciding whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds onto power when the election results are announced on 23 May.

One reason for the paucity of jobs could be the difficulty entrepreneurs face creating them in the first place - that's the view of Srikumar Mishra, who founded the dairy business Milk Mantra in Odisha in southeast India. Meanwhile 16-year-old Taneesha Dutta expresses her frustration at the lack of autonomy people her age are permitted, both by their government and by their parents.

(Picture: Students in Burul high school interviewed by Rahul Tandon)

Youtube: Cracking down on crackpots Apr 29, 2019

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What does the video-sharing site needs to do in order to stop inadvertently promoting dangerous conspiracy theories and extremist content?

Alex Jones's InfoWars channel (pictured) - which among other things propagated the lie that the Sandy Hook school shooting in the US was faked - has already been banned from YouTube, although his videos still find their way onto the site. Meanwhile the social media platform has also been clamping down on the vaccination conspiracists blamed for causing the current measles epidemic, as well as the far right extremists said to have inspired terrorists such as the New Zealand mosque shooter.

But is the tougher curating of content enough? Or does YouTube's very business model depend on the promotion of sensationalism and extremism by its algorithms? Ed Butler speaks to Mike Caulfield of the American Democracy Project, former Youtube engineer Guillaume Chaslot, and Joan Donovan, who researches the Alt Right at Harvard.

(Picture: Screenshot of an Alex Jones InfoWars video on YouTube, taken on 29 April 2019, despite the banning of his channel by YouTube)

When computer glitches ruin lives Apr 26, 2019

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Imagine losing your home, your job or your reputation, all because of a computer error. We speak to people who say that's exactly what happened to them.

Kim Duncan and her children lost their family home in the US after Kim's bank Wells Fargo mistakenly said she didn't qualify for a loan modification she needed to keep up with her repayments. Meanwhile in the UK, the Post Office is being litigated by former employees who were fired and in some cases went to prison after being accused of fraud - they claim because of a bug in the Post Office's accounting software.

Manuela Saragosa asks computer science expert Lindsay Marshall of Newcastle University whether glitches like these are unavoidable. Do they have to be so damaging, and are they likely to become an ever more common bane of our lives?

(Photo: Businessman sitting in a data centre looking frustrated. Credit: AKodisinghe/Getty Images)

The global affordable housing crisis Apr 25, 2019

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Do rent controls and the expropriation of apartment blocks provide an answer to the increasing cost of housing in the rich world?

Such radical measures are being considered in many of the world's biggest metropolises, as more and more residents find themselves being priced out of their home cities.

Manuela Saragosa speaks to Tom McGath of the Berlin-based campaign group Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen, who wants the city authorities to seize ownership of housing from the German capital's biggest landlords. But leading urbanist Richard Florida of the University of Toronto says there are better ways of tackling the shortage, not least taking on the "not in my back yard" brigade.

(Picture: A banner put up by tenants in Berlin protesting against the sale of apartments; John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images)