Brij Kothari and his team have innovated, researched, and nationally implemented "Same Language Subtitling" (SLS) on Bollywood film songs on TV, for mass literacy in India.

He laid the foundation for the SLS project as an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) in its Centre for Educational Innovation. He co-founded www.PlanetRead.org and www.BookBox.com as a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University.

Brij grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and went on to get a Masters in Physics at IIT Kanpur, Masters in Development Communication and Ph.D in Education at Cornell University. His doctoral research was on the conservation of medicinal plant knowledge in Andean Ecuador. He lives in Oakland, California. He is currently in Bangalore to be a part of the UNESCO conference of E-9 countries, in Bangalore, Oct 4-6, 2007.

You, along with your team and partner organisations, have redefined the traditional thinking about literacy and charted new paths to enable achieving greater levels of literacy. What do you hope to accomplish on this visit to Bangalore?

I have two goals. First, persuade educational policy in India to support SLS on every film song shown on Doordarshan, in any language. Prasar Bharati and its CEO are supportive, in principle, but do not see it as their responsibility to foot the bill for what is seen as a “literacy” service.  My challenge in Bangalore is to persuade education policymakers to take a hard look at the impact data. 

My second goal is to share SLS with top policy makers from the E-9, high-population countries that include Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan.  SLS has tremendous relevance for all of these countries, and therefore, could some day be India’s contribution to world literacy.

There is a lot of talk and self-congratulation about our accomplishments in literacy. How do you read these statements? Are we achieving the quality of literacy in a truly empowering way to the concerned individuals or communities? Or in other words how literate are the literate?

We are over-obsessed with the literacy “rate” and much less, the quality of literacy. In India, a literacy rate of 66% actually means that 16% are fluently literate (140 million), 50% are early-literate (420 million), and 34% are illiterate (300 million).

Because national policies primarily focus on raising the literacy rate, and a nation’s progress is judged by this yardstick, quality of literacy receives very little attention. I would suggest replacing the literacy rate with the “ability to read a newspaper headline” rate.

That’s when the masses of early-literates become visible and not passed off as “literate.” It is difficult to have a meaningful policy for what policy does not see.

Against this backdrop, how do we generate good and enough content in Indian languages - quality content that is also sought after by people and inspires them to seek literacy?

Outside of classroom situations, most people do not read with the goal of becoming literate.  They read to engage in interesting things or to achieve life goals, and in the process become literate.

The challenge is not only to generate quality content in Indian languages, but be able to get it into the hands of people living in 680,000 villages, at a difficulty level that matches the individual’s reading proficiency and a price-point that is affordable. Clearly, this is not easy if we depend exclusively on print. But that’s what most efforts do.
I believe that a major part of the solution to get people reading is to integrate reading into something that they already do, and in the process, enhance that experience.

It is so critical to catch them young. However the children's book publishing industry in Indian language is in its infancy. How do you think this can be addressed?

Countries with the highest quality of literacy are also countries that have well thought out policies to achieve early reading preparedness.

It’s the most powerful pearl of common sense, as you say, catch them young. Before a child enters formal schooling, he/she needs to have experienced reading and being read to, embedded in strong family and social bonds.

Granted, this is a challenge in the Indian context where not everyone within the family can read, especially parents, and there are very few children’s books available. But this is also where innovation must be encouraged by policy.

Creating a love and demand for reading may need nothing less than a national campaign. I’d say, we need an Indian Oprah Winfrey to entice every cricketer and Bollywood star, starting with Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan, to read one book a week on TV and see the magic happen.

The scale of the problem is staggering it is told. What is your estimate as someone who is assessing and monitoring this issue for many years now? What are possible approaches to tackle this mammoth issue?

In many village homes, we’ve asked a simple question, “Do you have any children’s books?”  Clearly, children’s books are almost completely absent in an estimated 140 million homes.

Yet TV is, increasingly present. Could a children’s “book” and by that, I mean, a reading experience for children be sent over the airwaves? We’re doing just that at BookBox, a for-profit social venture that creates Animated Books or “AniBooks” that can be broadcast on TV or piped on mobile phones, VCDs, internet, media players, and of course, good old print.

You are in a city where the private sector has a significant presence and a city that has a track record of successful public-private partnerships. What role do you see for the private sector and how can they collaborate with you?

We’ve so far been challenged to keep SLS on air on the 10 TV programmes we’re on.  Institutions like Google Foundation, World Bank’s Development Marketplace, IIM Ahmedabad, Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Ashoka, and MHRD have all contributed to the maturing of SLS.

No private sector company has contributed to SLS, yet but I know that will change. Until SLS becomes national policy, thus supported by the educational budget, the private sector could help by keeping SLS active on the 10 TV programmes it’s already on. Private TV networks could work with us to implement SLS on their own song-based programming, improving programme ratings in the process.