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From Our Own Correspondent: India's economic indicators - as fit as they seem?

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India's economic indicators - as fit as they seem?

22/02/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, India's economic indicators - as fit as they seem?

The questions niggling at the Indian economy. Plus stories from Russia, Kenya and the US

While the BJP government is buoyant, there are questions about the underlying figures. Plus: brutality in Russia's penal system, locust swarms over E Africa, and a Texas bootmaker

Narendra Modi's BJP government boasts of its fiscal policies and the health of India's huge and growing economy. But there are questions about how robust the statistics really are - and where the country's businesses are headed. Lesley Curwen recently heard some bold claims, and some lurking doubts, expressed in Delhi and Hyderabad.

Pascale Harter introduces this and other stories from BBC correspondents and writers around the world. 

Russia's penal system is notoriously harsh - but it is meant to be governed by law. The BBC Russian service's Oleg Boldyrev has been investigating a number of incidents of brutality in several facilities, some of them resulting in prisoners' deaths. There have been accounts of torture, extortion, beatings and murder. He asks how much of the truth about what goes on behind bars is ever made public. 

Billions of desert locusts are swarming over East Africa - spelling possible ruin for farmers in Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. Joe Inwood was sent to capture images of the insects on the wing, and found they were a moving target hard to keep up with. 

And in Forth Worth, Texas, Elizabeth Hotson visits a saddler and bootmaker where they still believe in old-fashioned craftsmanship, no matter how lurid the customer's choice of colours. At M L Leddy, a pair of boots can cost as much as a small car - but its staff insist the artistry involved is worth the price.

Photo: Visitors at the Auto Expo show on February 9, 2020 in Noida, India. (Sunil Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

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