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From Our Own Correspondent

Ear cleaners and road sweepers

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

India has a huge unemployment problem. Anu Anand takes a look at some of the jobs - such as ear-cleaning, pushing buttons in lifts and road sweeping with brooms - people do to make a living. Following the EU elections which saw an increase in the number of nationalist MEP across the continent, John Kampfner visits Aachen, a town at the historical centre of a unified Europe... under Charlemagne. In South Africa, the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood of Cape Town, with its cobbled streets and colourful houses, has become one of the country's must-see tourist destinations - and property there has become pricey. Ione Wells looks at the downside of gentrification. Only about 75,000 people in Estonia still speak the Voro language. Simon Broughton meets some of those trying to ensure it has a universal and lasting appeal. And Christine Finn finds herself, unexpectedly, on a mini-break: but not where she intended. What is it like to spend almost a week in Singapore's Changi Airport?

Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Caroline Bayley

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

0:04.6

Hello. Today, a lesson from history in the heart of Europe, a thousand-year-old lesson in

0:11.0

unification from Charlemagne.

0:13.7

Cobbled streets and pastled coloured houses in Cape Town, very attractive, but is that why locals

0:19.7

are leaving?

0:21.3

Estonian is not widely spoken, but the countries also host to yet another language,

0:27.0

spoken by just 75,000 people.

0:30.0

And we have a mini break in Singapore, and are thankful for little Feng Jui.

0:37.0

India's Prime Minister Norendramodi was sworn in this week for a second term after his

0:41.7

Hindu nationalist B.J.P. Party won an even bigger mandate than five years ago

0:47.0

when he promised more jobs. Yet under his watch, unemployment in India hit a 45-year high according to leaked government data.

0:56.0

A huge part of the population work in the informal economy and are difficult to track.

1:01.0

Anu Anand has been looking into the reality of the job market.

1:06.6

In Delhi at dawn, an army of workers fan out to do the jobs you're unlikely to find in such numbers anywhere else.

1:14.8

Men and women with Reed Brooms sweep pavements.

1:18.0

Full-time chauffeurs meticulously wash their employer's cars.

1:22.3

Nannies, maids, cooks and cleaners perform every tedious

1:26.5

chore. Men on bicycles pedal out to collect recyclables. Others sell balloons, fruit, or even cheese and booze door to door.

1:37.0

For a tiny sum, you can get your shoes mended, trousers and dresses made to measure, head massaged even jewelry repaired all by hand.

1:47.0

India wouldn't be India without this glut of cheap labor making life easy. If there's a job to be done no matter how menial

1:56.0

or niche here you'll find people to do it for pennies. This is down to the fact that half of India's population of 1.3 billion people is under the age of 25.

2:09.0

Each month, a whopping 1 million come of age, year 8 million of those new workers seek jobs.

...

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