The Hindu Business Line : Kyunki, it gets real

Little Meena is sitting on a kitchen bench with her father and younger brother. The father takes a bite and offers to feed Meena. Taken aback, with a wide-eyed look, she stutters, “But this is my brother’s.” The father looks reassuringly at her and says, “Eat, my child. Don’t you need extra energy when you go to school tomorrow?” The next shot shows Meena walking into a classroom and the teacher welcoming her. Subtle messages such as edu cation of the girl child, discrimination vis-À-vis a male sibling and demonstrating progressive thinking by making sure girls don’t have to shoulder the entire burden of housework, came through this episode of Kyunki… Jeena Issi Ka Naam Hai (Because… That Is What Life Is), a prime time serial running on Doordarshan since March 2008.

The soap, telecast thrice a week, courtesy UNICEF, Prasar Bharti, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and NACO, has just received an extension of another 130 episodes. B.S. Lalli, CEO, Prasar Bharti, while signing the MoU in New Delhi, said that the serial has had a high impact, especially amongst women and children in Hindi-speaking States, and is now being seen as a powerful vehicle of social communication in rural India.

Self-efficacy, practices and behaviours explained and promoted through Kyunki… are largely derived from Facts for Life, a publication developed by a number of UN agencies to deliver pertinent, rights-based information in a manner that is relevant and practical to people across the world. The aim is to generate behavioural results in support of key government initiatives such as the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and through them to contribute to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

According to UNICEF India Representative Karin Hulshof, 2,700 infants die within the first four weeks of life and more than 200 women die during delivery every day. She says the serial, “structured in a pure entertainment format, with all the ingredients that can bring back audiences, has its share of romance, deception, intrigue and suspense.”

Through a strong storyline, made with inputs from development communication experts, it aims to bring about behavioural change by improving the living standards of women in India with respect to maternal mortality, child health, property rights and discrimination.

There are fun moments as the story looks at life in rural areas, the role of the teacher and Asha worker — the village health worker in NRHM — operational dynamics of the village panchayat and governance of a typical patriarch-led rural home, making it easy for its target audience to identify with. “It has to ultimately lead to better informed decisions at the household level,” says Karin.

The second session of the programme will look more deeply at how people can access quality health services in the public health system, child protection issues, female foeticide and domestic violence. “Basically, it will cover everything that goes on inside the walls of the house,” she adds.

Understanding the viewer

Communicating social causes without being pedagogic seems to have paid off for Kyunki… In 2008, the serial reached more than 55 million viewers as measured by TAM Media Research and was rated consistently amongst the top three daily soaps on television. Monitored in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University, the latest audience survey also revealed that 55 per cent of respondents find Kyunki… more entertaining and 95 per cent find it more educational than any other show they watch on television.

According to Lalli, “getting the right format was not easy”. He explains that pilot episodes had messages streamed in a very obvious manner, which somehow insulted the intelligence of the viewer. His experience with the rural audience is that while they may not be adept at articulating their views, their understanding of social issues and ability to absorb information must not be underestimated.

His advice is to “not be didactic, obvious and propagandist in scripting the plot and dialogue with an overdose of messaging. Without adopting a condescending or teaching tone, emphasise only on plain and simple storytelling.” Not only has Kyunki... succeeded in making a non-profitable slot of 8.30 to 9.00 p.m. profitable but has also made Doordarshan consider increasing air time to public service broadcasting. Also, adds Lalli, this is the first time that the prime evening slots are being devoted to the rural audience. So far, most programmes have been urban-focused. Readers will recall that even Krishi Darshan, targeting the rural audience, used to be in the 7.30 p.m. slot.

With entertainment education being the larger role, Kyunki… succeeded in embedding messages on breastfeeding, diarrhoea, timing birth, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, safe motherhood, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, immunisation, early marriage, child labour and malaria into its plot and storyline, while keeping in mind Lalli’s simple advice: “Don’t overdo it; you don’t have to cover all the messages in one serial.”

Marrying a gripping storyline with social messaging has paid off. A Rapid Audience Assessment conducted with 404 women viewers in Hindi-speaking states by the Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi showed that 96 per cent of the respondents recalled at least one message from the show and 52 per cent at least three messages.

‘Pots and pans’ initiative

South Africa’s hugely successful Soul City campaign, being run for over ten years by an NGO, emerged as the foremost communication for social change projects in the world, covering a range of health and development issues.

The effectiveness of the serial could be seen when reel life motivated real life action with the ‘pots and pans’ initiative.

When members of the community brought out their pots and pans to create a racket outside a home that had incidents of domestic abuse (such as beating the wife, raping the girl child, or emotional and mental abuse), they superseded an impotent local policing system by shaming all those members who perpetrated violence in their homes.

The concept went down so well with audiences that rural pockets in South Africa actually started demonstrating the ‘pots and pans’ effect by coming out in droves to protect victims of domestic abuse. Here, social support developed its own moral policing code. Soul City, however, is a privately funded programme that is dependent on aid so only those issues that have donor funding tend to get covered.

This is where Kyunki… scores. It is backed by the Government, one that is committed and motivated to make a success of not just this programme but to use it as a springboard to come up with more programming in social communication.

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