Radio 4 Tonight - Two Development Programmes

There are two excellent programs on BBC Radio 4 this evening that are likely to be full of development and macro economics.

At 8pm Mukul Devichand presents the first of two episodes exploring the economic growth of India and China. In this first episode of Tiger v Dragon he focuses on whether growth in these two economies has benefited the poorest in society.

This is the Asian century. It will be increasingly dominated by two countries that share nearly half of the world’s population: India and China. But the hype around the economic growth of these two Asian giants, lumped hopefully together as “Chindia,” has obscured some much darker truths.

In this provocative series of programmes, Mukul Devichand travels across frontiers, from the controversial new ports China is building in the Indian Ocean to the poor interior villages of these continent-sized countries. He examines whether China’s authoritarianism may in fact be doing much more for the poor than India’s sometimes bloody democracy. He also looks at how the old nationalist rivalries mingle with the intense hunger for oil and other natural resources. Far from the dream of a co-operative “Chindia,” there’s a risk India and China may well end up at odds with each other in what some have called an Asian cold war.

Part 1: The Power of the Poor

In the churn and tumult of India and China’s rapid economic growth, which country has done more to lift the lives of its hundreds of millions of very poor? In the first programme of the series, Mukul Devichand travels from Indian sweatshops to villages in rural western China to tell a tale of difficult lives, development and bloodshed which challenges the very idea of democracy.

While India gave the poorest a vote at the ballot box, Communist China delivered rural education and built roads and factories at breakneck speed. Has Indian democracy failed to deliver where authoritarian China has succeeded?

Following this at 8.30pm Crossing Continents asks whether an economist can save Peru?

The world famous Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto believes that the key to ending poverty for countless millions is to give them the right to own the land that they live on. If a person owns the land, and has the paperwork to prove it, his theory says, they can use it as collateral to borrow money from banks to help build businesses and improve their quality of life.

But de Soto’s ideas have proved controversial. Now they are being tested in the rainforests of the Amazon. The indigenous Peruvians who live there believe that they already own the land and protest against what they see as the encroachment of big business. Last year, protests culminated in more than 30 deaths at Bagua

Linda Pressly journeys from Lima to the heart of the Amazon region with Hernando de Soto to discover how he is working with indigenous people

Both programs look like they will be full of development economic examples, ideal for your papers next week. Remember IB examiners want economic theory backed up by real world examples.