India and Vietnam

Available for over a year

Owen Bennett Jones introduces personal insights, reflection and wit from correspondents around the world. In this edition: social discord and musical harmony, as Craig Jeffrey explores what Indian activists are doing to combat corruption and Duncan Forgan visits an Aladdin's cave for instrumentalists: the aptly-named Guitar Street in Ho Chi Minh City. Speaking truth to power In London and New York the ranks of protesters are complaining about the bankers. In the Middle East the targets of popular rage are old authoritarian leaders. And in India? Corrupt public officials are the hate figures of choice. Craig Jeffrey has been contemplating the anger many Indians feel about civil servants ripping them off. When the music fades Around a decade ago, FOOC's presenter Owen Bennett Jones came across some westerners living in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi who had formed a band called the Social Weevils. This was a play on words, riffing on the then government's constant diatribes about "social evils". But the band had to get the name past the official censor. "It's an insect thing," they explained. "We just want to be like the Beatles." It worked. Our team now wonders if they played with the instruments spotted by Duncan Forgan - on Guitar Street.