India is the next destination for BBC World's Country Direct season of programmes and online content starting on 8 February.
With decisive elections due in May we explore some of the issues affecting Indians from all walks of life.
In Working Lives BBC reporter Rupa Jha meets a handful of residents of Ahmedabad with very different jobs and social positions.
Perhaps no other country on earth is so unequal, and in Ahmedabad we see the full spectrum.
From a space scientist to a slum litter picker, from a manufacturing magnate to a toiler in one of the city's textile plants, we see what life is like at the extremes of the Indian experience.
That divide is also evident in Pune, where Tim Samuels, spends time with the city's premier league team, Pune FC.
He finds out who watches football and what is the sport's allure in a country traditionally enamoured with cricket.
He also meets another football team, one made up of dalits, who are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system and can only aspire to the big time.
Talking Movies' Tom Brook will be looking at the antidote to Bollywood, the new wave of Indian cinema that has an independent sensibility, as well as the renaissance in regional cinema: Bengali and Punjabi films, and the impact they're having on the industry.
Meanwhile our travel programme, Fast:Track, external, travels to Mumbai to report on its growing nightlife. Rajan Datar also looks at how technology is changing tourism, and he visits the city's first theme park Adlabs Imagica.
He goes to Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad where you can live like Gandhi for a week. In Goa, Rajan joins a group of volunteers to Clean Up India. And he visits the coast of Karnataka and asks is it the new Goa? Rajan will also ask how safe it is for female travellers.
The BBC's Direct seasons are a chance to look behind the headlines at everyday life in one country.
Each Direct allows the BBC's experts and locally based journalists to explore the issues which reveal the heart of a particular country.
They examine topics which matter to anyone trying to understand that country and its people: the economic opportunities and challenges; living life at every level of society; its traditions; its politics and innovations.
The Direct seasons complement the BBC's Country Profiles by covering more personal stories through programmes such as Working Lives and Fast:Track.
You can view all the Direct seasons here, external.
