After a month cooped up in a Scottish castle, no internet, no TV, and no radio, watching hectic snowflakes billowing through the wooded hillside opposite my window, I realise that what I’ve missed most about this supposed deprivation has not been the news (to which I thought I was addicted) or the chatter, the company of other voices, but the chance to be taken in my head to other places and inside quite different experiences of life. It’s not just the factual education that radio can provide (although I’m pretty sure most of what I know has come from listening on air), it’s the absorbing intimacy of hearing other people talk about themselves, as if only to you, one-to-one, in direct communication. This week, for instance, the World Service has given us two programmes about India, or rather about the state of the Indian economy today. Not dry, academic accounts of why India has been left behind by China and in spite of its incredible resources of manpower and materials still has 300 million people below the poverty line, but conversations with Indians as they go about their daily lives.
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