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Entertainment Education Forum

India - Taru

Taru was a entertainment-education radio soap opera named after its key female protagonist and aired from February 2002 to February 2003. The weekly broadcast of the radio serial also included promotion of on-the-ground reproductive health clinics in 25,000 villages. Although serial dramas are not new to India’s airwaves, the close partnership with a service provider that serves as a model in health care delivery in the storyline, provided a new framework for behaviors and actions promoted through the drama.

Issues Covered
Broadcast Details
Social Impact

PCI-Media Impact partnered with several organizations to develop this project, including All India Radio, Ohio University and with the Indian NGO, Janani, which is a local health service provider. Janani trains rural medical practitioners (RMPs) and their wives to promote basic health practices in remote rural communities. These RMP teams provide the infrastructure to reach the many villages where people are in need of basic health services and means of family planning. The partnership between PCI-Media Impact and Janani provided a mutually beneficial relationship for both. Janani's vast infrastructure aided in the publicity and promotion of the show through posters, wall paintings, and handbills distributed through the network of RMPs to the villages they serve. Ohio University had considerable experience in evaluating entertainment-education programs, carried out an independent monitoring and evaluation to assess the effects of Taru and All India Radio provided broadcast facilities, writers and actors.

Issues Covered:

Sexual and Reproductive Health, Family Planning, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV/AIDS, Gender Equality, Education and Literacy, Substance Abuse and Domestic Violence, Rights, Inter-caste Harmony.

Broadcast Details:

Taru premiered on February 22, 2002, in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh and followed with broadcasts reaching across the Hindi belt in May 2002. The 52-episode soap opera was broadcast once a week over the period of a year. The purpose of the serial drama, while entertaining and educating its audience, was ultimately to motivate listeners to take charge of their health, seek out health services, and improve their own lives.

Story Summary: 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 - Episode 11

(large audio file, 21MB file, MP3)

Scene– Suhagpur – Sheetal Center. Taru is sitting in the Center. Shashi Kant enters. Taru wants to know what happened at Neha's place. Shashi Kant is narrating the developments when a boy enters the center and informs that Kalua is planning to kill his newborn daughter. Taru and Shashi Kant rush immediately to Kalua's house where a big crowd has gathered but none of them is able to stop Kalua from this ghastly act. Taru and Shashi Kant try to vein to stop him. In the mean time Aloni Baba comes along with Guruji and warns Kalua that if at all he even tries to commit any such thing, he will be burnt to ashes by the curse of God. At this Kalua gets scared and promises that he will not harm the infant. Everybody takes a sigh of relief.

Back in the center, Nisha comes to inform Taru that Neha has sent a message for all of them to reach her village at the earliest as there a child marriage is going to take place in the family. Click here to see the script.

Social Impact :

About 10% of all households in the general population in Bihar, and 24% of households in the population being addressed (those who owned a radio and were regular listeners) listened to Taru.
Before Taru aired, respondents in the sentinel site area had significantly weaker beliefs about gender equity and family planning, and perceived greater barriers to achieve gender equity and small family size. Fewer people used certain family planning methods, and fewer people felt that their friends and family members approved their use of family planning methods.

Researchers observed "overall sales of Mithun condoms increase over 200 to 600% as a result of the broadcasts."

Reductions were identified in perceived barriers to family planning methods; increases were identified in: perceived approval from friends on family planning issues, perceived quality of family planning services and knowledge about where to go to get family planning services, awareness of Surya clinics, perception that Surya Clinic services were of high quality and trustworthy, use of Apsara oral contraceptive (as compared to the pre-broadcast Taru sample), and use of modern family planning methods (with the exception of vasectomy).
Perceived collective empowerment significantly increased among respondents who listened to Taru. Post-Taru respondents felt that their communities displayed greater degrees of social capital when compared to the pre-Taru respondents.

Social Impact: Taru Comes to Abirpur

Researcher Devendra Sharma, traveled to Bihar to document the effects of the radio serial drama, Taru, on its listeners. This video shows how a group of teenage girls were inspired by Taru to set up a school for about 50 children who previously di not have access to education.

Research found that the greater the intensity of on-air/on-ground intervention, the higher the percent of respondents who knew about Taru's messages and the higher the numbers of those who actually listened to Taru. That is, listenership increased in environments where there was enhanced "buzz" (ground-based activities, publicity, listeners' groups, etc.) about Taru. Furthermore, Taru spurred a great deal of interpersonal communication about the need for girls' education and small family size among audience members, and also between audience members and their spouses, children, relatives, and friends, who were not "directly" exposed to radio program.

The enhanced visibility of local health services as a result of the various Taru-related pre-publicity and orchestration activities (including the organising of the folk performances and the handing out of transistor-radio awards to listening group members) led more villagers to seek their services. Overall, sales of Mithun condoms increased over 227 and 680%, respectively, in Abirpur and Kamtaul villages (in Madhopur and Chandrahatti, condom sales increased significantly during the first 9 months of Taru's broadcasts and then dropped down to about the original baseline levels). Sales of Apsara pills increased over 200, 580, 400, and 420%, respectively, in Abirpur, Kamtaul, Madhopur, and Chandrahatti villages. Finally, sales of pregnancy dipsticks increased 167, 600, 400, and 200%, respectively, in those same villages.

Overview And Executive Summary of Taru Project – Quantitative Reports

Overview And Executive Summary of Taru Project – Qualitative Reports