Education in the Everyday: How TV subtitles are increasing literacy in India

To the average casual Netflix watcher, perhaps the biggest benefit of subtitles is getting to understand what’s going on in the show over your loud snack crunching noises.

Though we might laugh at this shared experience, what if I told you that movie subtitles have the potential to do so much more than clarify dialogue – and they might even be the key to unlocking global literacy?

Perhaps this shouldn’t be entirely surprising. Film and television have long been agreed to have a positive effect on language acquisition and fluency, providing vocabulary expansion and helpful exposure to viewers learning a language. RM, the frontman of the global K-pop phenomenon BTS, shared before that he learnt English from watching the sitcom Friends.

But Dr Brij Kothari has bigger dreams: the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) professor wants to use subtitles to help a billion Indians to read. While watching a Spanish film, he wondered whether Hindi subtitles for Bollywood films would improve India’s reading literacy – ever since that moment in 1996, Dr Kothari has been working tirelessly on this idea.

Focusing on Same Language Subtitling (SLS), Dr Kothari began BIRD – the Billion Readers Intiative.

The Billion Readers Initiative

Although India statistically boasts a literacy rate of nearly 80 percent, the truth of the matter is more discouraging. Studies have found that half of rural Indian children at a class 5 level cannot read a class 2 level text, and are scarcely literate. Dr Kothari attributes this problem to intermittent schooling in rural areas, where children either miss a large percentage of schooling days or frequently drop out of school, losing essential regular exposure to reading practice.

Where reading is limited, however, television is a household mainstay. The BIRD initiative believes that TV content with SLS will encourage existent viewers to practise their reading ability automatically and subconsciously as they follow along with the subtitles while watching their programmes. Through strategic partnerships with state governments, major TV networks, streaming platforms and content producers, the BIRD team hopes to increase subtitling on television and streaming platforms in all Indian languages.

One of the BIRD team’s hopes is to improve reading literacy specifically for women, as many girls in India drop out of school early and lose valuable opportunity to read. SLS allows these girls and women to continue having avenues to read at home as they watch television. The BIRD team believes that SLS will vastly improve the reading skills of this demographic, giving new dignity and empowerment to India’s female population.

So far, SLS has seen much positive response and support from both television viewers and government policymakers. As part of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s Accessibility Standards, all major TV channels are now required to subtitle at least one programme per week. BIRD soon hopes to implement SLS on 1,000 hours of entertainment content per language, in 12 Indian languages.

On the ground, viewers in an early survey spoke of their positive experience with SLS. One respondent shared that watching television with SLS had taught many people in his neighbourhood to not only read, but also write and even sign documents.

But what if we take this success one step further?

The beauty of SLS is how it takes an everyday activity – watching television – and leverages it for transformative learning. Where the BIRD team finds its sweet spot in a more subconscious, on the go initiative, this is just step one towards an accessible education. If you’re thinking along the same line as us, you’re definitely already asking: what if these learners could use this newfound literacy to learn more?

And that’s where the Patatas’ CaseStudy comes in.

CaseStudy is a complete school-in-a-box learning management system that connects teachers and learners in zero-infrastructure communities anywhere. Not dependent on internet or power, CaseStudy is the perfect tool to bring education to such rural communities. It even comes equipped with its own comprehensive digital library of resources, eliminating a reliance on textbooks or internet connectivity.

Although it is a purely digital and technological system, CaseStudy is remarkably simple to set up, onboard and use, even without technical expertise. Its user-friendly interface and dedicated support team allow users to keep their focus on teaching and learning, without having to worry about technical issues.

CaseStudy is also a cost-effective solution for rural communites running classrooms. One single CaseStudy is around the price of an average laptop, but can serve an entire classroom of up to 20 devices within a 30-50 metre range.

Every child deserves the opportunity to learn, and initiatives such as BIRD are incredible steps towards global education and empowerment.

Here at Patatas, our hope is to always take these successes even further, and fulfil our vision of bridging the education gap through technology. While not all of us might be able to influence government policies from where we are, starting a partnership with CaseStudy could be the way to go.

So the next time you’re crunching on your chips and enjoying your Netflix comfort show, perhaps you might remember India’s billion readers. Isn’t it delightful that something as simple as subtitles could have such a big impact?

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