Kavita Puri
with Ant Adeane & Emma Rippon, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service
Kavita Puri is a multi award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author. She is the creator and presenter of the series Three Million for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. The series producer is Ant Adeane and the editor is Emma Rippon. The podcast pieces together – for the first time – one of the darkest periods in our colonial past that took place in the middle of World War Two. Around three million Indians, who were British subjects, died in the 1943 Bengal famine. It’s one of the largest losses of civilian lives on the Allied side but is not remembered with a memorial or even a plaque anywhere in the world today. This complex, and fraught history is told through extraordinary eyewitness and survivor accounts, that have never been broadcast before.
Kavita’s shortlisted pieces are:
- Three Million Episode 1 War
- Three Million Episode 2: The Cigarette Tin
- Three Million episode 3 The f-word
- Three Million episode 4 The Tapes
This podcast on the Bengal Famine feels like a real passion project: Puri has collected voices from the few remaining people alive who remember that time, and skilfully interwoven these interviews with archive interviews. She conjures up a lost world of imperial privilege and terrible decisions, bringing in multiple voices without the narrative ever feeling cluttered.
– Helen Lewis, 2024 Orwell Prize for Journalism judge
