by Satinder Chohan
Playwright

I began writing my first play ‘Zameen’ after reading about farmer suicides across India and in my ancestral homeland of Punjab.

I had always imagined Punjab as a lush green, mythological land of sturdy farmers, saints and warriors but discovered that in recent years, an ‘economics of genocide’ had driven thousands of its farmers to suicide.

According to vastly underestimated official figures, 150,000 Indian farmers took their own lives between 1997 and 2007. It was a story I felt compelled to tell.
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Singer Jay Sean releases his new album, My Own Way, from today. The album is available from most music retailers.

Nikita Lalwani’s multiple award nominated debut novel Gifted has been turned into a drama for BBC Radio 4. The drama serial will broadcast in the mornings next week.

Its cast will include Archie Panjabi, Sadia Ghaffar, Nina Wadia and Sagar Arya.
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British actress Rebecca Hazlewood’s new film - Kissing Cousins - has started doing the festival rounds in Los Angeles. The former Crossroads star left for Los Angeles a few years ago and returns to London on occasion.

Kissing Cousins is produced by Amyn Kaderali and Manish Goyal. Both were behind Call Center, a short film that became very popular on the web.

Kissing Cousins played at the Asian Pacific Film Festival last week and is currently touring other film festivals in the United States.
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BBC Asian Network’s publicist Dina Rana has moved on to the corporation’s Future Media team, to work on projects such as BBC iPlayer. Her last day with Asian Network will be Friday May 16th.

Her position will be filled by Andrew Bate, who previously handled publicity for Asian Network as well as Radio Five Live.

Young actor Sagar Radia will feature in two episodes of BBC’s award-winning series Waking the Dead next week, 5th and 6th May.

Seen most recently in a supporting role in the Channel 4 drama Britz (pictured), he began acting at the age of 17 while training at the Harris Drama School in Wembley. His first role came as a patient on Casualty in 2005 and since then he has done commercial work for Tesco (2005) and the Cricket World Cup (2006). He eventually graduated from City University with a degree in Media & Sociology.

Nearly 18 months after Poorna Shetty left the building for thelondonpaper, Asiana magazine has finally appointed a new editor, it told AIM Magazine this week.

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A new weekend schedule at Asian Network will launch from 17th May, the radio station announced this week, with the creation of two new shows.
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The BBC Asian Network has been nominated for three awards at the prestigious Sony Radio Academy awards, it was revealed today.

Also up for nomination was Islamophonic, the Guardian newspaper’s monthly podcast on Muslim issues, produced by its religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt.

The show initially started as a weekly project but has since been scaled down to a monthly podcast as Riazat took on more responsibilities at the Guardian.

BBC Asian Network has been nominated in the Digital Station of the Year category. Its Asian Nation project has been nominated for a Community Award and its documentary on ‘Britain’s Missing Girls’ is up for a New Feature Award.

The Sony Radio Academy awards will take place on May 12 in central London.

Irfan Hamid, the former head of business and strategic development at Carphone Warehouse, has moved to the technology start-up SpinVox.

SpinVox’s core business revolves around ‘voice to screen messaging’. In other words it turns mobile voicemail messages into texts, among other services.

Hamid initially joined The Carphone Warehouse in 2000, from Prudential Corporation, where he had started off fresh out of University on their Business Management Graduate Scheme, working in various divisions across the globe. In 2002 he was promoted to head of business development for growth markets. In this position he reported directly to the UK CEO and contributed to strategic planning and development as a member of the executive team.
www.spinvox.com

A new series of Street Doctor airs from this week on BBC1. The popular programme starts on Wednesday April 2nd at 7.30pm and will run for 6 weeks.

In a cast of four doctors, it stars 34 year old Dr Ayan Panja who works in a busy inner city North London practice with over 4000 patients.

While the second series is aired, the BBC is filming the third series of the show.
More info: bbc.co.uk/streetdoctor