Literacy on a song

I have recently become interested in the ICT4D space and there is no better country to understand the potential and impact of information and communication technologies than India. However, the work of hundreds of grassroots entrepreneurs injects a dose of innovation and confidence into the ICT4D markets that is very encouraging. While researching the social entrepreneurship sector in India I noticed that the use of simple technological tools was widespread in enabling change across local communities. In the course of my research, it became clear that entrepreneurs were employing web based technologies or reengineering traditional communication models for solving some of Indias most acute social problems. One such non profit is the PlanetRead Foundation that operates in India and California. The organization has patented SLS or Same Language Subtitling, a simple idea which has been instrumental in strengthening weak reading skills of more than 200 million people. Using a karaoke approach to reading, PlanetRead enables the subtitling of poplar entertainment content in the language of its production. Watching and reading Bollywood films and music and other widely watched popular programming simultaneously has been proved to effective in converting weak literates to literates. A 2007 PlanetRead study reveals that while Indias last census pegs literacy rate at 68% based on the ability of a person to write his or her name, the literacy rate is only 55% by the paragraph reading method. However, the founder of PlanetRead struggled in the face of government apathy in the early 1990s when he took the idea of SLS to Doordarshan, Indias biggest government operated national television channel. However , the belief in the strength of the idea and backed by robust scientific evidence of its viability, Brij Kothari, the founder was able to persuade the bosses at the TV channel to give the concept a try. Today, SLS is employed across several song based programs on Doordarshan but policy agendas continue to slow down wider adoption of the technology, a roadblock that the founder has publicly acknowledged.

A note on impact of SLS would be worthy in a post on ICT4D, considering thats the largest grey area that practitioners in this sector struggle with. The most significant impact study that has been conducted to understand the effects of SLS was carried out by Neilsens ORG Center for Social Research for PlanetRead. A randomly drawn sample of 13,000 non readers and budding readers was selected as the baseline in 2002 to test for their reading skills after SLS was added to Rangoli, a nationally televised program of Hindi film songs. The reading skills of the same sample were tested using the same battery tests as 2002 in 2007 giving the impact assessment more credibility. The impact of SLS on illiterate schoolchildren was measured in 2007 after SLS was introduced to Rangoli in 2002 using both experimental or SLS group and control or No-SLS group. The study found that exposure to SLS more than doubled the percentage of children who became good readers and halved the percentage of children who remained illiterate. The premise of SLS lies in the logic that a child learning how to read in school can also benefit from practicing the same skills at home, while watching a show with subtitles.

In an interview for a paper on social entrepreneurship, Mr. Kothari mentioned to me that while PlanetRead has a core team of 20 people, each individual is responsible for helping a million people read (keeping Indias population in mind) and thats the conviction that keeps them going. He is also a believer of the power of irrefutable scientific evidence and mentioned that his faith in the concept of SLS came from rigorous pilot testing of the tool before he took it to India. Brij Kothari was conferred the India Social Entrepreneurs 2009 Award by the Schwab Foundation in 2009. As I plan my graduate thesis in social entrepreneurship, I thought I will share the story of PlanetRead with the Hastac community and have since, uncovered many other changemakers who are using already existing communication tools for empowering people and perhaps Ill share more such stories on this platform in the near future.

But PlanetRead is testimony to the change that is possible when an entrepreneur combines a simple communication tool and the strength of an idea and discovers an effective, low cost yet sustainable solution to a large scale problem such as literacy.