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Alternative Radio for May 05, 2008
1:02 PM - 2:00 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: "Brave New India: Uprisings," with Arundhati Roy
India is hot. Its meteoric rise as an economic power with a growing number of millionaires and billionaires is a great success story. Not quite. Politically, India has gone from its Nehru-inspired non-alignment to aligning itself with Washington. Its priorities mirror its mentor's. 19% of the country's budget goes to the military while education gets about 5% and public health a scant 1%. Journalist Praful Bidwai writes, "We are a poor country and we are spending like crazy on guns while 77% of Indians live on less than 20 rupees, 50 cents, per day." They have little access to clean water and electricity. The contrasts and contradictions are sharp and widening between the rich who live well-lit lives of opulence and the indigent who are literally in darkness. From Assam to Jharkand and from West Bengal to Andhra Pradesh, the dispossessed are rebelling and resisting
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an author, lecturer and activist. Her book, "The God of Small Things" won the prestigious Booker Prize. The New York Times calls her, "India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence." She is the winner of the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom. Her latest books are "An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire" and "The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile," with David Barsamian.
Alternative Radio is a weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and on short-wave on Radio for Peace International.
Established in 1986, AR is dedicated to the founding principles of public broadcasting, which urge that programming serve as "a forum for controversy and debate," be diverse and "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." The project is entirely independent, sustained solely by individuals who buy transcripts and tapes of programs.
Its "headquarters" is situated to correspond with its position in the mainstream mass media: down an alley, behind a house, on top of a garage in Boulder, Colorado. From this rarefied location, AR's programs manage to reach over 125 radio stations and millions of listeners. AR is part of the non-profit Institute for Social and Cultural Change.
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