The Rs 11-lakh project has been taken up by Ahmedabad Doordarshan Kendra, in collaboration with Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and DECU. If successful, the idea can be implemented in other States also. For people who are in danger of relapsing into illiteracy or those with poor reading skills, this technique is understood to provide reading practice in an entertaining way. Viewers, including the completely literate, can sing along and learn the lyrics of popular songs.

Says coordinator for the project, Prof Brij Kothari of the Ravi Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation at IIM, ``Presently, Gujarat annually spends Rs 11 crore on post-literacy which comes to Rs 15-20 per semi literate per year. We propose to spend only Rs 10 lakhs per year on subtitling and this itself will give much better results at a cost that is only 7 paise per semi-literate per year''.

Several field tests in villages, slums and railway stations have confirmed that viewers generally find subtitled song programmes more entertaining than regular untitled ones. Indications of the enormous potential of the idea for promoting state and national literacy were obtained from a sustained three-month experiment with children in a Government primary school in Ahmedabad. Reading improvement was measured and found to be greater among people who saw subtitled song programmes against those who saw the same programme without subtitles.

While Doordarshan Ahmedabad and DECU have helped start the project, a need is being felt for other policy-makers and institutions to step in to sustain the initiative.