Entertainment Summit West - Los Angeles

Entertainment Summit West - Saloni Puri Transcript

Saloni Puri, Managing Director, BBC World Service Trust - India

Namaste. I come from very far away, (India), and I’m extremely privileged to be participating in the Entertainment Summit – West, and learning what people around the world are doing in entertainment education. We have a little corner, and we work very hard in that little corner, and it is nice to share stories from across the world. I would just love to talk about India, but first I will give you a little perspective on what the BBC World Service Trust is doing across the world.

Basically it is a charity within the BBC World Service and it's funded by international NGOs, by UN agencies and by laterals. Our mandate is very simple. We are using mass media to bring about positive social change in developing countries. We work in widespread geographical areas. We work in the Balkans, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Asia, the Middle East, in Iraq now, and in Afghanistan and Cambodia.

I was planning to give a slightly longer talk, but I think editing is extremely important in entertainment, so we shall edit. Let me just tell you very quickly about two of our extremely crucial projects. One is in Afghanistan and the other is in Cambodia. In April we celebrated a ten-year anniversary in Afghanistan of our soap opera there, Radio Soap Cities, which has been running since 1994. Radio Soap Cities has seen the people of Afghanistan through the Taliban, through the war, through 9/11 and now through elections and reconstructions. In fact leading up to the Afghan elections this Saturday, my colleague Shirazuddin Siddiqui was supposed to come here, but he just couldn’t make it because he said, “you know, my elections are on Saturday. There is no way that I can leave Afghanistan right now because the BBC Trust is involved in training journalists there on best practices”. They are involved in setting up a media resource center in Afghanistan. They have been talking to the government of Afghanistan to set up a system of a national broadcaster. So, he is very much involved in developing the media in Afghanistan and Shiraz therefore couldn't be here with us today. But he sent me some notes about the ten year celebration of the soap opera.

Once again it's all about telling stories because it, the soap opera, is basically set around the lives of a night watchman and a farmer. It's as simple as that. They live in this fictional village and it's the night watchman who has become so popular that people write in to suggest brides for him because he's not married. The audience says, “Why don't you set him up with so and so?” And just to give you the extent of what kind of stories we've been handling in the drama series, when the refugees started leaving the camps one of the stories we ran was asking the people not to leave the camps because then aid would not be able to get to them. And they actually turned around and began to stay within the camps so that aid could get to them. Another episode was played during the air raids when people were taking shelter in the ruins, and that is where landmines are found. So we began to air stories about not taking shelter there. It was through a drama story that they were getting the direct message not to take shelter in the ruins because that is where the landmines were located.

They did a survey and the results said that people who had been exposed to the drama series, who were, listeners of the drama series, were less likely to be killed by landmines by than those who had not been exposed to the drama series. It's a powerful, powerful method. It's amazing what you can do! And then as an offshoot of that what we've done is we've designed a comic book there for people with slightly lower literacy levels. So the drama series in Afghanistan now is available in the form of a comic book.

When the Taliban banned education, an offshoot started which was an educational broadcasting project on radio aimed to reach kids between the ages of nine and eleven. It's called Reach and it's still broadcasting an alternate form of education for children in Afghanistan. So, this is some of the work that the BBC has been doing in Afghanistan. We are there to stay, and we’re hoping to continue the radio series including talk shows and documentaries.

The project has just expanded and that's what happens in the way we work. We work very, very closely with local governments and local broadcasters. The whole effort has to be sustainable. So, even if the BBC World Service Trust was to leave, most of the people are from Afghanistan and they would continue to do the work even if we were to leave that country.

One of the tasks we set out to do is to create a drama series on television in Cambodia. They have no history of drama, and they are in the process of rebuilding their country. Most of the people are 18 to 25 years old and they have no history of writing in that country. They have no history of drama, either. It’s secondary. They don’t write novels because there is no literature. We did a training exercise where we took university students between the ages of 18 to 25 and we got writers from the BBC in London to come in and do a series of workshops with them, and actually taught them to write stories for the soap that we were developing. We also used local talent because there is no history of acting. Nobody had ever acted in any drama series before in Cambodia. Again, local people who have never faced the camera are being tutored and work shopped into being actors. There is no equipment, so where does one begin? The BBC World Service Trust has now just created the largest indoor studio in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia. And we are shooting our soap opera there. No production staff, so again, training. So we’re not only producing a soap, we’re producing a whole industry in Cambodia - and we’re ready. A twice-weekly soap will be going on air in December. And, it's a medical soap. Neal -- we’re taking off from your ideas there.

So, we would be very happy to exchange some ideas. It's set around a training college for girls who are nurses. The main characters have stories and of course because it’s a hospital and training college, there's a lot of characters that walk in and out and stories, which are built around them. I think, you know, the Cambodians are going to be seeing for the first time, a locally produced soap with their own faces, their own stories on television. So, we are really excited. It will be shown on TV Five, and it's going out on a very popular satellite television, which is good.

The only types of soaps these people have seen are Thai or Chinese soaps. They've all seen imported and dubbed soaps, but this is their first local language soap. It's all being made in Khmer, so we're really excited about it. I don’t have any subtitle episodes to show, so please forgive me. I would have loved to show them to you. But it's going out in December, and hopefully maybe next year, I can tell you how we did…So that's the Cambodia project.

Now I shall be bipartisan. I've spoken about the Afganistan and the Cambodia projects, and I shall tell you about my project in India. Instead of actually telling, you know, taking you through it verbally, I think since I am in the business of creating media, I think I'll show you the tape. If you could roll the tape please.

(VIDEOTAPE)
The BBC World Service Trust first came to India in 1999 to run a mass media campaign on leprosy. That campaign was hugely successful and that led us in to 2001 to securing funding from the Department For International Development in the UK to run this mass media campaign on HIV AIDS. In India we work in partnership with Prasar Bharati the State Broadcasting Organization, NACO the National AIDS Control Organization. We make a TV drama series, a youth program for television and also a range of television and radio spots. All of them designed to promote knowledge and awareness of HIV AIDS. The underlying principal behind this campaign is that if people acquire sufficient knowledge and awareness they will then take action.
The first movie, an action packed series, “Jasoos Vijay” is India's first interactive detective drama. Filmed in Hindi the series is being dubbed into five other India languages: Urdu, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bangla . It’s broadcast partner Doordarshan is in a primetime slot.

We set out to create a series that would not only allow us to embed health messages, but one that would strongly appeal to our target audience. The vast world population of India that can only be reached by Doordarshan TV series in India are very popular amongst this audience. But to make justice we did the very best of its kind, we decided to shoot the entire series on location. This gives an authenticity that is unique on Indian TV, and secondly allows us great scope for action.

The series has consistently occupied places in the Top 20 TV programs across all India and is one of Doordarshan's highest rated programs. In the last series viewers discovered that Detective Vijay is himself HIV positive. Each episode of Jasoos Vijay is hosted by the celebrated Indian actor, Om Puri. And as part of our unique interactive element he invites the viewers to try being detectives themselves. To catch the culprits before Jasoos Vijay does. In competition with mainstream program entries from all channels in India, Jasoos Vijay was voted the thriller program of the year at the 2003 India Telly Awards.

The Trust also produces the youth reality TV series Haath Se Haath Milaa, Let's Join Hands, which won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association UNICEF Award for 2003 for the partnership. Two buses carry groups of young men and women of India across India visiting some of the remotest corners of the subcontinent and picking up fellow travelers, along the way. The buses have traveled over 15,000 kilometers. A distance greater than the circumference of the moon. Over the past two years some of India's best-known celebrities from cinema, music and sport have joined the Haath Se Haath Milaa convoy. The spirit of Haath Se Haath Milaa is one of journey, discovery and empowerment through knowledge and shared experiences. It is also one of adventure, of overcoming social barriers and battling odds hand in hand with Haath Se Haath Milaa. But above all they gain valuable insights into people living with HIV AIDS who are struggling to find a voice in society.

For a young audience great music is essential. And we give our audiences some really great music. With the first CDs we released our album Lau which went on to become a big bestseller. We're hoping to repeat the same in a much bigger way with our new album Hakidam

The Trust has also produced campaigns of advertising spots for both television and radio providing audiences with lifesaving information on HIV and AIDS. The public service commercials we use are an integral part of this campaign. What we're able to do with them is focus on key messages. Now these messages could be about prevention, treatment, how AIDS is caused, how it's not caused. It could be stigma, discrimination. It could be even be the connection between STD, RTIs and HIV AIDS. And we're able to focus on them in each 60 second commercial we produce. We work very closely with the Ministry of Health, our partners are the National AIDS Control Organization, and our State Broadcaster, which is Doordarshan. And, of course, we are able to draw on the wealth of talent, which is available in the advertising fraternity in Mumbai and in Tele. Because this is behavior change communication what we do is at the end of every commercial we give a writing address, so people can write into us for more information on AIDS. They had the commercials produced in the past where actors have played the roles of HIV positive people. We didn't think that worked. We wanted a real person. The Trust makes it a point to sponsor every single viewer who writes in, and more importantly we give additional information on HIV and AIDS. We also provide a thorough system so that people can contact local agencies for additional support, counseling and advice. We also have a dedicated website for each of our programs. Again it acts as a vehicle to which we can respond directly to our viewers. We have an in house research team. We conduct a range of program specific research. And that includes pre-testing of our scripts and spots. And they also work continuously on impact research, which is supervised by an external independent evaluator. And that helps inform the decisions and the program making process. The hard work of this partnership has already reached many millions of TV viewers in India. Already one of the most ambitious HIV AIDS media campaign of its kind anywhere in the world. The health unit of the Trust is always looking at new ideas, new projects, other illnesses and we always welcome new initiatives and particularly new partners, Haath Se Haath Milaa, Let's Join Hands.
(End Videotape)

SALONI PURI: The last thing I want to mention is that we're going into the third season of Jasoos Vijay, and it's interesting to note that he is now HIV positive. He will be able to deal with some of the issues such as rights at the work place, discrimination at home, and among friends, and vital drug testing, counseling… all the issues. All we've done so far in the first series is talk about prevention and now we will automatically be able to deal with a more holistic approach toward HIV AIDS. We're starting the third series now and it should be on air in February next year. Thank you.

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