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Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

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The Fifth Floor: My Delhi, My India

Documentaries

David Amanor and Vikas Pandey in Delhi

10/03/2017 GMT

My Delhi, My India

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, My Delhi, My India

In a country with many ethnicities, beliefs and cultures, what does it mean to be Indian?

Pollution and wide open spaces; when elections get personal; and why identity matters.  David Amanor gets under the skin of capital and country with journalists from BBC Delhi.

How do journalists from BBC Hindi, BBC Urdu and BBC Tamil cover a huge and complex country like India. And in the week that the BBC highlights pollution and how it's being tackled, we hear about the challenges of living in one of the world's worst-affected cities.

The Great Smog of Delhi
Delhiites have lived with unhealthy pollution levels for many years, but for a week last November, the city experienced its worst smog and visibility for nearly two decades - the Great Smog of Delhi. In some areas, the level of air pollution was 10 times more than the recommended safe limit. Reporter Vikas Pandey and David Amanor take the air in the Old City, where narrow streets are clogged with cars, scooters and tuk-tuks. 

Back in the studio, David and Vikas are joined by BBC Delhi's Divya Arya and Zubair Ahmed to discuss:

India's passion for politics
The headline news this week is key elections in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh - it has been said that the party that wins the state rules the country. BBC reporters have fanned out across Uttar Pradesh to get stories and canvas opinion. And in Delhi itself, from pavement teashops to city bars, the elections are the talk of the city. Why are Indians so passionate about politics, and what does the UP vote say about India today?

Challenges of reporting India  
BBC Delhi journalists say they are experiencing a new level of intolerance. Social media users sometimes accept rumours and allegations as news, and journalists who challenge the truth of such stories lay themselves open to abuse and even threats. We hear about the professional and personal challenges that result. 

Delhi's disappearing spaces
Another pressure on Delhi's air quality is the rapidly increasingly population, bringing with it more traffic, more factories and more construction. A city famous for its trees and green spaces is gradually losing them under tarmac and concrete, and many Delhiites are retreating into gated communities. Reporter Nitin Srivastava takes us to his favourite park and laments what is being lost.

Being Indian
In a vast country with a huge diversity of ethnicities, beliefs and cultures, how do Indians identify themselves? BBC Tamil's Thangavel Appachi takes us to the market area of Karol Bagh to share memories of the culture shock he felt when he arrived in Delhi from Tamil Nadu. In the studio,  David Amanor is joined by Shakeel Akhtar of BBC Urdu, BBC Hindi's Vaibhav Dewan and Arti Shukla of BBC Monitoring to discuss a time of transition in India, with challenges to centuries-old barriers of gender, caste and geography. 

Being Delhiite
David goes out with Delhiites Sumiran Preet Kaur and Indu Pandey to see how young people in the capital chill after work.

(Photo: David Amanor and Vikas Pandey in Delhi)

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