Social Innovation: Sing Yourself to Read With Bollywood

Who would have thought that mixing Bollywood film songs with popular Indian television shows would help improve India's literacy rate?! These two factors are being used as social innovation technique that is called 'Same Language Subtitling' (SLS). It is the simple idea of subtitling the lyrics of existing film songs (or music videos) on TV, in the 'same' language that they are sung in; a kind of Bollywood karaoke for mass reading! It is a clever, yet simple method, which is already delivering results and reading practice to the millions of weak Indian readers. It is the type of entertainment education that works through mass entertainment media to subtly deliver information that convinces viewers to change their behaviour and improve their lives.

SLS was the social innovation idea behind The World Bank's Development Marketplace grant program in financing a creative pilot led by Brij Kothari at "Planet Read Literacy for a Billion". The pilot included Hindi subtitles to a popular television program that showcased Bollywood film songs with impressive results. The effects were staggering and the levels of illiteracy were cut in half. The percent of children who were learning to read more than doubled; and they became good readers in the process. According to the last Census (2001) in India, its literacy rate was: 65.4 per cent, which roughly translates as 300 million illiterate and 560 million literate people, over the age of seven.

India boasts the largest Hindi cinema industry in the world and its population's passion for these musical films is undeniable. Music and songs are very important for the success of a Hindi picture; sometime becoming the lifeline of the movie. The people of India satisfy their hunger for entertainment by watching Bollywood film songs on television. Over 500 million people in India, which is about half of India's population has access to television. Each television is watched on an average by five people and there are 27 million rural viewers than urban ones. Therefore, the social innovation potential to use entertainment as means for education and development has never been greater than it is now.

In India, more people have cell phones and televisions in their home than have indoor plumbing! While, those homes with no television sets almost certainly have at least one radio or mobile phone. More than a billion households worldwide have a television. Television penetration rates in emerging economies like Vietnam and Algeria are as high as 80 percent and over 95 percent in Mexico. As telecommunications technologies continue to expand, reaching even the most remote and challenging environments the social innovation potential of mass entertainment media to help people read is enormous. It captures people's attention regardless of culture or context and costs almost nothing.

Photo Credit: S Pakhrin