The presenter and stand-up comedian Beth Angell will embark on a journey throughout India on 4 March, experiencing the wonders of a country fast becoming one of the world's economic powerhouses.

In the striking series Angell yn India, shot in High Definition, Beth will also be on a personal pilgrimage. She will visit the Khasia Hills in the north east of the country, where her grandfather was a missionary with the Calvinist Methodists and where here father lived for the first ten years of his life.

"I've got a personal interest in the country's history," said 34-year old Beth. "I used to keep my hockey stick in an elephant's foot, a present my grandfather brought back from India after 30 years of mission work there. My father's tales about his childhood involved monkeys and tigers, not cats and dogs.

"I'd always wanted to go there and see the place for myself. It was a very special challenge to make a television series filming the country in a period of great change and to see whether these changes are benefiting the country's people or not."

The result is a four-part series which opens with the emotional experience of visiting her father's first home, which has now been converted into offices for the neighbouring chapel.

India is home to over 1 billion people and covers more than 3 million square kilometers and during the series Beth visits Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.  In those cities, the economic growth is evident in such diverse fields as information technology, health servies, heavy industries, food and clothing production and the film and entertainment world.

But the cameras also show the terrible poverty, poor living and working conditions and social inequality which can be seen clearly next to the economic progress and fast growth in the middle class.

To Beth, who was brought up in Cardiff but who now lives in Caernarfon, the poverty was eye-opening.

She admits: "It's very difficult to believe that India will be the next superpower when you see the terrible poverty and people starving on the street. It's such a huge country, it's difficult to see how they can pull things together to improve things at the moment."

But she adds: "But you also feel the excitement in the country. You'd meet incredible people who wanted to see India succeed for each one of her inhabitants and who wanted to draw the country together and build a foundation for the future."

Angell yn India
Wednesday, 4 March, 9.00pm, S4C
Repeat on Sunday, 8 March, 10.15pm, with English subtitles.

Available on www.s4c.co.uk/clic