Years ago, waking up early on a Sunday morning was purely for a single purpose – to watch Rangoli. A song compilation feature on Doordarshan (DD), Rangoli, apart from the legendary Chitrahar was the only way to catch up with Bollywood hits on TV in those days. Though many of us have moved onto 24×7 television with its endless cacophony, there is a vast majority of India that still relies on DD to meet its informational and entertainment needs. While surfing channels the other day, I stumbled upon Rangoli and observed that the lyrics of the songs were also being displayed in sync with the video . As some other music channels too do this so that you can sing-along, I thought DD was playing catch up once more with its competitors. But I soon came to know that it is actually an initiative to improve the literacy levels in India piggybacking on the inherent appetite for movies among Indians.
Courtesy: Jaydeep Bhatt
Apart from healthcare, low literacy levels pose a significant challenge to India’s ambitions of being in the league of developed nations. Though the government proclaims that over 60% of this country is literate and the count is growing, in most cases being literate merely means you can sign your name on paper. This is exactly what Brij Kothari, a professor at IIM Ahmedabad relates to when he says,”How many of the so called literates can read a newspaper, write a letter and fill out applications?”. Even those who can do more than the basic reading and writing face the danger of slipping back due to lack of practice and reinforcing of the learning. Brij Kothari decided to tackle this problem through his foundation PlanetRead by using the simple tool of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) in song based programs like Chitrahar and Rangoli. Research based on tracking eyeball movment with captions being displayed on the screen have proven that reading of the text is automatic and unavoidable while being non-obstrusive to the changing visuals in the video. This means while people continue to enjoy the audio-visual, they also read the text in the same context – “one reads what one hears”. By using the immense reach of DD, especially among the urban poor and rural India, SLS ensures that reading skills are automatically practiced at home by people who need it the most. To top this, the cost of delivering SLS is minimal. PlanetRead estimates that for every 50 rupees spent on SLS, 100,000 people can get around 30 minutes of reading practice for a year.
The results speak for themselves. An independent study carried out by Nielsen’s ORG Center for Social Research, highlighted the fact that only 25% of school children could read a simple paragraph in Hindi after five years of schooling. The figure more than doubled (56%) for respondents exposed to just 30 minutes of SLS per week via Rangoli. The numbers were consistently higher for all other literacy parameter like writing one’s name, home address and familiarity with any five words. SLS now leverages four and half hours of prime time viewing on DD and also now is available in other local languages thereby enhancing its reach significantly. The beauty of this idea lies in its simplicity and ability to leverage on existing platforms to deliver on something essential for the nation’s growth at a mass level.
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Came across this a few days back.. nice that you have written about it..