Brij Kothari—PlanetRead and IIM Ahmedabad

Brij Kothari interacting with viewers of Same Language Subtitling in Gulbai Tekra Slum, Ahmedabad. Image courtesy of Jaydeep Bhatt

The Organization

Using the simple tool of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on popular song-based television programs, PlanetRead is sharpening the literacy skills of an estimated 200 million ‘literates’ or ‘neoliterates’ who have weak reading and comprehension skills, despite having attended at least primary school. By superimposing subtitles on visuals in the ‘same’ language as the audio, Brij ensures that reading becomes a byproduct of entertainment already consumed by the audience.

A joint venture of PlanetRead and IIM Ahmedabad, SLS has combined the tremendous reach of India’s national broadcasting agency, Doordarshan, with the enormous appeal of film songs, to give lifelong reading practice to early literate persons.

The Innovation

According to the 2001 Census, 65.4 percent of India’s population over 7 years of age is literate as against 52.21 percent in 1991. However, there are no statistics available on the skill levels of the 560 million celebrated ‘literates’. Brij asks, “How many of the so called literates can read a newspaper, write a letter and fill out applications?” These, he argues, are important questions in a country where an ability to sign one’s name often gets equated with literacy.

PlanetRead believes that literacy skills have to be constantly reinforced if populations are to be prevented from regressing back into illiteracy. Drawing heavily from research carried out in the West on similar subtitling techniques—closed captioning and karaoke, the team has tracked eyeball movement to prove that reading of television subtitles is automatic and unavoidable.

The salient features of SLS are:

• The subtitles in the same language are in perfect synchronization with the audio track—one reads what one is hearing.
• SLS requires no behavioral change on part of the viewer—it slides onto the visual in a non-obtrusive manner at the bottom of the screen.
• Reading skills picked up in school or adult literacy classes are automatically practiced at home as song based programmes attract high viewership.
• Drawing on the learnings from karaoke and closed captioning, SLS also provides reading practice for the hearing impaired.

According to the SLS team, SLS literally ‘costs a song’. In India, because of the large number of viewers in most major languages, every 50 rupees spent on SLS, can deliver on average, 30 minutes reading practice to approximately 1,00,00 people, for one whole year. To ensure the success of SLS, Brij set himself two clear goals: back his conviction with research; and partner with government agencies to ensure large-scale reach of SLS.

A team of statisticians from IIM Ahmedabad has tracked the impact of SLS over nearly 10 years. The research includes a baseline study in 2002 by the SLS team. Nielsen’s ORG Centre for Social Research later carried out two independent impact studies in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Gujarat in 2003 and 2007. The Nielsen’s methodology followed a two-pronged approach:

1. Self reporting—in the first instance, the team followed the census method of asking the head of the household to report the number of literates in the family.
2. Reading method—the same respondents were asked to read a paragraph of grade 3 level.

The sample size was drawn from 3179 households, translating to 17,782 individuals age 7 years and above. Nielsen ORG gathered data from five villages in each of the five states. The team assessed the sample for various aspects of literacy—familiarity with alphabets, ability to read words, speed of reading, as well as indicating the movement of text in the right direction.

The data analysed by the SLS team yielded the following results:

• In the group, not exposed to SLS programs, only 25 percent school children could read a simple paragraph in Hindi after five years of schooling.
• This figure jumped to 56 percent, (reading the same paragraph), for respondents exposed to subtitling for 30 minutes a week on Rangoli a popular song-based programme on TV.
• Exposure to SLS led to higher rates of ability to write one’s name (82 percent vs. 55 percent), home address (56 percent vs. 34 percent) and familiarization with any five words (72 percent vs. 45 percent).

For SLS to reach the millions of early literates in India, PlanetRead has 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. In 2002 Doordarshan agreed to subtitle popular song based programs. Today, superimposed on Rangoli and Chitrahaar, SLS leverages four and a half hours of primetime viewing per week on Doordarshan—this does not include the repeat telecasts. In addition, regional stations of Doordarshan in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu include SLS on the local language film songs.

Brij is also the Founder of BookBox, a for-profit social enterprise that produces animated books with same language subtitling on compact discs and VCDs. Its core competence lies in creating and adapting culturally rooted, value-based stories in many languages, both international and national, through digital media. Based on the response to SLS, BookBox aims to provide reading practice to children aged 6 to 14 and familiarize a child aged 4 to 5 with basic print concepts—how print moves in a certain direction and the stringing of alphabets to form words.

The Impact

Children from Khodi Village, Gujarat singing after writing down lyrics from TV. Image courtesy of Brij Kothari

India spends less that 4 percent of its GNP on education and is ranked an abysmal 147th out of 177 countries measured for literacy by UNESCO. In such a scenario, Brij’s simple—yet highly leveraged—model of SLS, coupled with entertainment, provides very low cost reading practice to an estimated 200 million weak readers on a mass scale, thus arresting skill erosion. The research carried out by PlanetRead shows that SLS is doubling the number of children who will become good readers after five years of primary schooling. Brij is now pushing for SLS to be accepted as national policy.

The Entrepreneur

“SLS gently, almost surreptitiously, releases reading into people’s insatiable appetite for film songs, thus turning millions into lifelong readers.”

Brij Kothari

Brij Kothari serves as an Adjunct Professor at IIM Ahmedabad (IIM A) and is the Founder of PlanetRead. A student of Shri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, Brij has a Masters in Physics from IIT Kanpur. He studied Communications (Masters) from Cornell University and was awarded a doctorate in education from the same University. After completing his dissertation on the conservation of indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants, he returned to India and joined as faculty at IIM Ahmedabad.

In 1996 while watching a Spanish film with his friends, Brij hit upon the SLS idea. As a student of Spanish, Brij wished that there could be subtitles in Spanish so that he could read along. SLS on song-based programs became his passion—both personal and professional. SLS won the World Bank’s Development Market Place Award in 2002 and the Tech Museum Award in Education in 2003.

Brij divides his time between PlanetRead India and PlanetRead USA. His wife, who is training to be a nurse, and three children live in the US.