www.civilsocietyonline.com

March 2009 Edition

 

Shreyasi Singh
New Delhi

TO many, Brij Kothari's ambitions might seem just too big. It is unusual, after all, for a personal mission to be as big as his. As a member of the faculty of IIM, Ahmedabad, and as President of PlanetRead, an NGO that he has founded, Brij bravely aims to make India a country of a billion literate people.

Using the simple tool of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on popular song-based television programmes, PlanetRead is sharpening the literacy skills of an estimated 200 million 'literates' or 'early literates'. By superimposing subtitles on visuals in the 'same' language as the audio, Brij ensures that reading becomes a byproduct of entertainment that is already being mass consumed.

Government estimates claim 600 million people are literate in India, but, in reality, nearly half of these literates can best be called early literates or neo literates. Despite five years of primary school education many early literates cannot read even newspaper headlines. But, they are a step ahead of illiteracy because they do possess some rudimentary familiarity with alphabets. It is these early literates who benefit mostly from SLS.

PlanetRead has effectively leveraged the ubiquity of television in rural India to promote learning. Over the last 10 years, SLS (a joint initiative of PlanetRead and IIM Ahmedabad's Centre for Educational Innovation), has been successfully implemented on film songs and popular entertainment programmes on TV in 10 languages – Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, and Punjabi. So, a Hindi song has lyrics subtitled in Hindi, a Bengali song has Bengali subtitles. What you hear is what you read. Subtitles are even designed so that the colour of every word changes in perfect tune with the song.

Brij, an Adjunct Professor at IIM, an Ashoka Fellow, says he first thought of Same Language Subtitling while watching Spanish films. As a student of Spanish, he knew he would get valuable language practice if he could also read what he was trying to hear. He then spent nearly two years researching and testing the concept, but found it difficult to sell it to broadcasters who were clearly reluctant to give the innovative idea a shot. Finally, Brij managed a debut for SLS through the Doordarshan Kendra in Ahmedabad in 1999 where a gutsy director took the risk of using SLS in four episodes of a popular TV programme. Field reports from across Gujarat confirmed SLS worked, and viewers wrote in to Doordarshan to laud the effort.

"Literacy skills have to be constantly reinforced if we want to prevent our population from regressing into illiteracy without much access to reading practice," says Brij. He further explains that by studying similar subtitling techniques like closed captioning and karaoke, his team has tracked eyeball movement to prove that reading of television subtitles is automatic and unavoidable. SLS also enhances the entertainment value of song-based TV programmes, and contributes to higher viewer ratings. This, PlanetRead says, is crucial for tempting private broadcasters to try out SLS.

In 2007, IIM Ahmedabad commissioned an independent research study by AC Nielsen ORG - CSR to test the impact after 4.5 years of SLS in Hindi on national TV. In one finding, a group of School Only were compared with School + SLS. The results were beyond doubt. The percentage of good readers in those with access to SLS was more than double as compared to those who relied only on school.

For SLS to have widespread impact IIM and PlanetRead have brought the government, especially the Department of School Education and Literacy and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on board as strategic partners. The partnerships have come after a long struggle.

"It has taken us 10 years of persistence to get here. We now know SLS works, but till today we are dependent on individual patronage. Individual policy decision- makers have supported us. But, SLS should be made a policy. It is difficult to negotiate the bureaucratic labyrinth. Innovation cannot be judged in a black box," explains Brij.

Brij adds SLS is a no-risk proposition considering it literally "costs a song" to implement. In India, because of the large number of viewers in most major languages, every Rs 50 spent on SLS, can deliver on average, 30 minutes reading practice to around 5,000 people, for one whole year. That's an investment of one paisa per person.

Justifiably, Brij and his team have won supporters and awards. SLS has been recognised by the World Bank, the London Institute for Social Invention and San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. PlanetRead has been supported by The Google Foundation, Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mahindra Tractors and DELL Computers. Recently, Brij was a finalist for the Indian Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008. His education seems to have set the tone for this ingenuity. Brij grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and went on to get a masters in Physics at IIT Kanpur. He is also a masters in Development Communications, and a Ph D in education, both from the prestigious Cornell University, USA.

Understandably, there is a quiet sense of satisfaction in Brij's voice. "We are a team of 20, and if Planet Read has helped 200 million people improve literacy levels, it means each person in the team is responsible for making 10 million people read better. That is very fulfilling and it's what keeps us going."

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are strictly personal and civilsocietyonline.com does not necessarily subscribe to them. We shall endeavour to upload/publish as many of the comments that are submitted as possible within a reasonable span of time, but we do not guarantee that all comments that are submitted will be uploaded/published. Messages that harass, abuse or threaten other members; have obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content; or have spam, commercial or advertising content or links are liable to be removed by the editors. We also reserve the right to edit the comments that do get published. Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly.

 

About Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ©2007 Civil Society

.
........................................Webmaster Vishwanathan ( vishu4@rediffmail.com )