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Video commercial shows couples the benefits of family planning
By Katie Nguyen
How do you make family planning desirable in a mostly patriarchal society which demands women produce as many male children as possible, fast?
You woo them with the "romance of a better life", of course, and the promise that by staggering the birth of your children by several years you can be richer, healthier and happier.
That's the view of Radharani Mitra, creative director and executive producer of BBC Media Action, the BBC's international development charity which uses media to fight poverty and promote human rights.
Her team was asked by the government of one of India's poorest states - Bihar - to come up with a family planning campaign focusing on the benefits of spacing - allowing a gap of three years between the first and the second child.
"In India for the past 40 years, the government has been going blue in the face talking about family planning," Mitra told a discussion on population politics at the Southbank Centre's WOW – Women of the World festival in London this weekend. "It's wallpaper, nobody listens which is why we have 1.2 billion people, so is there a way we can shape new language around spacing?"
The result was a commercial featuring a mantra of “1-3-2”, which refers to the goal of having a three-year gap between the first and the second child.
The glossy advert depicts a playful moment between a young couple as the husband flirts with his wife while their infant daughter sleeps. Asking his wife where the bangles on her wrist and the glow on her cheek come from, she replies “1-3-2”. Asking her where she learnt the mantra, she replies he taught her.
"The one thing that these people who live a hand-to-mouth existence would understand is if we could demonstrate immediate benefit," Mitra explained. "What is immediate benefit? Benefit is the health of the mother and the baby and also money, that you save money by producing less children, by giving that gap."
She went on to explain that it was a conscious decision to portray a man who did not think his wife was a "complete idiot".
"Communication needs to act as a compass and sometimes needs to create a slightly higher, altered reality that can be aspirational," Mitra said, adding that by depicting the romance of a better life, the commercial might just persuade men in Bihar to abandon the path taken by their fathers and uncles and make a change.
"For the woman, if she can even make him feel that it is he who give her the mantra - it's the deviousness and wiley-ness of women and I'm very proud of that deviousness as a woman because I get a lot of things done by it - ... why not?"
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