From On Air - Fall 2003
Taru Launches
and Offers Hope to Millions in India
The northern states of India’s
Hindi Belt are immense and suffer from tremendous poverty.
In Bihar, 100 million people eke out a living on five percent
of India’s land, and more than half live under the poverty
line. Fewer than two out of 10 women can read and write, with
illiteracy consigning millions of young women to early childbearing
and lives of poverty.
PCI offers these young women a new role
model in our radio soap opera Taru. The drama tells
the story of Taru, a 21-year-old woman determined to resist
local cultural norms and further her education, shaping her
own destiny outside marriage. Set in two Indian villages and
one town, Taru addresses a range of current knowledge,
attitudes, and behaviors identified in our local research.
Early marriage, son preference, birth spacing, and other critical
health and social issues all receive dramatic treatment as
Taru’s characters find their way through the
pressures and conflicts of modern rural life.
Taru began airing once a week
on February 22, in the Indian states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh. In June, the show began airing
in Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal,
and Uttar Pradesh, effectively covering India’s entire
Hindi Belt. The program’s debut marks the culmination
of a successful and unique collaboration among four partners:
PCI, All India Radio, Ohio University, and Janani, a non-profit
organization engaged in the social marketing of reproductive
health care and delivering services in villages throughout
Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
PCI’s partnership with Janani is
a cornerstone for the new program. Janani’s extensive
community programs and reproductive health service infrastructure
form the backbone of Taru’s health promotion,
with epilogues and spots noting available local services,
while hundreds of Janani’s clinics are publicizing the
radio soap to increase listenership.
But it is Taru’s plot line around Janani—Taru
works for a fictional version of the agency—that provides
an exciting opportunity for role modeling. Between her persistence
in education and her work helping community members, PCI hopes
that Taru will become a meaningful model for young
women’s aspirations in rural India. And with clinic
settings and discussion a regular part of the drama, Taru
will encourage women and men in the audience to become more
active in seeking care and advice on family planning and reproductive
health issues.
A research team from Ohio University is
another critical partner in the Taru initiative.
The team will study the results of this unusual opportunity
in public health interventions: a long running, on air, entertainment-education
media program directly linked to on-the-ground, community-based
service delivery.
Taru’s launch was preceded
by an extensive publicity campaign that included radio and
television spots, widespread placement of the Taru
logo on billboards and posters, and regional press outreach.
Listener registration is being organized by All India Radio
to regularly gauge audiences’ responses to the program,
while epilogues and announcements will further encourage listeners
to write in.
Taru’s launch party attracted
an exciting roster of artists, executives, and guests, including
senior directors and program officers from All India Radio,
the program’s actors and creative talent, and health
and political leaders from Bihar. Correspondents from four
major daily newspapers also attended. Held at the Hotel Ashok
Patliputra in Patna, Bihar’s capital, the party started
at 7:30. A radio receiver in Siddharth Hall was tuned in to
the first episode of Taru at 8:00. So were millions
of others across northern India.
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