Arvind Singhal, Saumya Pant, and Everett M. Rogers (2000). Environmental Activism through 'Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye
Hum,' an Entertainment-Education Radio Soap Opera in India. In Manfred Oepen and Winfried Hamacher (Eds.),
Communicating the Environment: Environmental Communication for Sustainable Development (pp. 176-183),
Frankfurt, Germany, Peter Lang.
Environmental Activism Through an Entertainment-
Education Radio Soap Opera in India
,D,rvi:-:dSi:1ghal.
Saumya Pant and Everet, M. Rogers
In the past decade, a "new" communication strategy called entertainmenteducation has shown promise in addressing such sodal problems as unchecked population growth, gender inequality, environmental degradation and illiteracy (Singhal/Rogers 1999, Piotrow et al 1997). Entertainment-education is the process of purposely designing and implementing a media mes.'iage to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members' knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior (Singhal & Rogers 1999). Er.tertainment-education seeks to capitalize on the popular appeal of entertainment media to show individuals how they can live safer, healthier and happier lives. and to show communities how they can address such problems as large family size, environmental pollution, HIV/ iIJDS, and the like.
The idea of combining entertainment with education is not new: It goes as far back in human history as the timeless art of storytelling. For thousands of years.
music, drama, dance and various folk media have been used in many countries for recreation, devotion. reformation and instructional purposes. The conscious combining of entertainment appeals with educational messages. however, in radio and television soap operas, comic books, and rock music is a matter of the past 25 years (Singhal and Rogers 1999).
The present case describes the Indian experience with an entertainment-education radio seriaL "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" ("Where Have We Arrived?").
which promoted envirolliTtentalissues in India, and, among other things, helped spur environmental activism in Village Lutsaan of India.
"Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye Hum"
In 1998, All India Ramo (AIR),the Indian national radio network. under the leadership of
MIS
Usha Bhasin, a well-known radio producer and director, broadcast a highly popular entertainment-education radio serial entitled "Yeh
Kahan Aa Gaye Hum':' ("Where Have We Arrived?") to explidtly tackle environmemal issues. Through an entertaining storyline, the 52-episode radio serial addressed environmental issues such as air, water and noise pollution. deforestation, solid waste disposal. organic farming and other topics.
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In designing "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye, Hum?", Mrs Usha Bhasin and her team capitalized on lessons learned during the past decade in producing several highly popular entertainment-education radio serials dealing with such issues as adolescence ("Jeevan Saurabh" in 1988), marriage incompatibility ("Jeevan Saurabh If' in 1989), teenage sexuality ("Dehleez" in 1994-1995), and women's status, family size, and community harmony ("Tinka Tinka Sukh" in 1996-1997)
(Bhasin and Singhal 1998, Singhal and Rogers 1999). The environmental issues promoted in "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" were culled with the assistance of the
Central Pollution Control Board of India.
India's renowned music lyricist, Javed Akhtar, wrote the catchy theme song for
"Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum", which was sung by the highly popular singers Kavita Krishnamurthy and Shankar Mahadevan. A great deal of preprogram publicity over several months preceded the first broadcast of " Yeh Kahan Aa Caye
Hum".
This preprogram publicity was carried out via radio, television, and the national, regional, and vernacular press. In addition, some 60 non-governmental organizations working on environmental issues in the broadcast area were involved in promoting the radio serial in their local area of operation.
Representatives of these organizations met in Delhi for a two-day workshop organized by Mrs Usha Bhasin to chalk out key environmental issues, especially the ground realities of how these issues could be acted upon by listeners.
The program was sponsored by Breeze and Lifebuoy, two well-known brands of the Hindustan Lever Company, providing an opportunity for AIRto recover its production costs.
The epilogues in the serial were delivered by Shabana Azmi, a popular Indian film actress, a social activist, and a member of India's parliament. An epilogue is a concentrated 30 to 50-second advertisement for the educational message, usually delivered by a credible. media celebrity. Following the broadcast of each episode, Azmi summarized the modeled messages about pro and antienvironmental behavior, goading listeners to launch village-clean up drives, plant trees, conserve water, and use reusable cloth bags instead of disposable plastic ones. She also encouraged listeners to write to AIRdescribing their perceptions of the positive and negative environmental behavior, depicted in the program, and specifying what new forms of behavior they had incorporated in their day-to-day lives. A competitive spirit was fostered among listeners by awarding prizes for the quality of the feedback they provided. Outstanding community work by listeners in the realm of environmental conservation was also recognized.
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..Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" was broadcast from June to December 1998 via 31 radio stations of All India Radio, covering seven Indian states in the densely populated Hindi-speaking area of northern India: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. Some 600 million people comprising 100 million households live in these seven Indian states.
Our previous research suggests that such entertainment-education programs can attract a regular listenership of 40 to 50 million people (Singhal and Rogers
1999), which, in the case of ..
Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" may constitute the largest audience for an entertainment-education program on the environment anywhere in the world.
I
Community Effects of Radio in lutsaan
In addition to analyzing the storyline, epilogues and several hundred listeners' letters of "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum", we investigated the effects of the radio serial in Village Lutsaan in the Uttar Pradesh State of India, where since 1997, we have been studying the community effects of radio. Our interest in Lutsaan was piqued in December 1996, when a colorful 21-inch by 27 -inch posterletter-manifesto with the signatures and thumbprints of 184 villagers,was mailed to All India Radio in New Delhi, then broadcasting an entertainment-education soap opera ..
Tinka Tinka Sukh" (Happiness Lies in Small Things), the predecessor to "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum".
The poster-letter from Lutsaan stated:
"Listening to ..
Tinka Tinka Sukh" has benefited all listeners of our village, especially the women. Listeners of our village now actively oppose the practice of dowry they neither give nor receive dowry."
We visited Village Lutsaan for the first time in the summer of 1997 to gauge the effects of the radio serial ..
Tinka Tinka Sukh".
Intrigued by this community's voracious appetite for radio listening, and impressed by its unique ability to pop pop radio's educational messages into concrete community development initiatives, we returned to Lutsaan again in July 1998 and January 1999 for extended field visits. As "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" was broadcast from June to
December 1998, our previous two visits to Lutsaan, especially, provided us with a unique opportunity to investigate the community effects of this environmental radio serial. During these visits, our research team spent over 50 person-days in Lutsaan, conducting over a dozen focus-group discussions, two dozen in-depth interviews, photo documentation, and various forms of participant observation activities.
'
VillageLutsaan, located 30 kilometers from Aligarh, the nearest city, rises some
90 feet above the surrounding Gangetic Plain. Most of the village's approxi-
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mately 1,000 homes are located on the sides of a small hillock, topped ancient fort. The adobe homes neighbor in a dense manner. The populatl
Lutsaan is about 6,000. Numerous narrow paths meander among the mud I es. Buffalo are everywhere, and the smell of dung pervades the village. F flat fields surround Lutsaan, and its farmers travel out to work on them eacl
Compared to most Indian villages, Lutsaan is relatively well-off, with 60 radl
I
5 television sets, and 10 tractors. Nearly every household owns a bicycle and households possess a motorcycle. Lutsaan has two village schools that offer I I years of education. The village has a Shyam Club with about 50 active mI.
bers. It carries out various self-development activities, including village cl
I.
up, fixing broken water pumps, and reducing religious and caste tensions in tl village. The village postmaster is chair of the Club. He told us that when interpersonal conflict occurred recently, members of the Shyam Club met with the disputants until a solution was mediated. In 1996-1997, stimulated by tl radio serial, ..
Tinka Tinka Sukh," the Shyam Club devoted its main attention l such gender equality issues as encouraging girls to attend school, and opposin child marriage and dowry. Hence, even before the broadcasts of "YehKahan A
Caye Hum" began, the village community of Lutsaan was already hooked t radio listening.
Not surprisingly, we found that both men and women in Lutsaan listened to
"Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum".
Two radio listening clubs - one for men, the other for women - each comprising about 25 members, were highly active during the broadcasts of "Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum".
To publicize the serial and promote environmental activism, these listeners' clubs had set up some 50 hand-painted posters and wall signs, encouraging other villagers to listen to the radio program.
The club members paid about Rs 15 (less than 50 cents) monthly, which was used to publicize the serial and organize pro-environment activities for the village.
Our observations showed that the members of the radio club listen to the serial collectively. Each episode of" Yeh Kahan Aa Caye Hum" was followed by a highly engaging post-broadcast discussion. The secretary of the male listening club took copious notes while the episode was being aired, and maintained a diary account of the key happenings of each episode. After the episode was over, he typically set the discussion agenda among the listener members, who then interpreted the key environmental lessons in the episode just broadcast. The discussion usually ended by identifying feasible ideas for implementation at the village level.
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, 1 arned that the listeners' club in Lutsaan launched several social camn to save the environment. Inspired by the radio serial, members went on ycle tour to educate the public to conserve fuel, thus saving the environ-
I I t t from pollution. They rode to the nearest railway junction where several
-rickshaws waited, with their ignitions on, for the train to pass. The Lut-
_n "activists" explained to the drivers the hazards of air pollution, encouragthem to switch off their ignitions. The drivers initially thought that the club mbers were crazy. But the Lutsaan team persuaded them to switch off their ling engines.
M mbers of the Lutsaan listeners' club also approached heavy smokers in the lllage, informing them about its health hazards, including the problems of air lIution. To boost their credibility in these environmental missions, they often ok "Bapu", a village opinion leader, with them and other volunteers of the hyam MandaI, a self-help group in Village Lutsaan. This collaborative synergy tween members of the radio listeners' club and the Shyam MandaI helped pur and sustain environmental action in Lutsaan.
Another suggestion that the Lutsaan residents gleaned from the serial"
Aa
was to plant trees on festive occasions. During one of our research visits, the club members planted trees. Some ten saplings were prepared for planting in different areas of the village. They knew from listening to the radio serial that these saplings would grow into trees that would provide fruits and shade.
Why was"
so effective in stimulating environmental activism in Lutsaan? Exposure to this radio serial was higher in Lutsaan than elsewhere in North India. Prior conditions in the village helped magnify the impact of this entertainment-education radio program: active radio listening clubs, group listening to the radio episodes, a highly-respected village leader in the postmaster, and the activities of a village self-help group.
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