Viacom18, Gates Foundation and BBC Media Action team for drama
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Editor
| 20 December 2018

In an industry first, Indian entertainment company Viacom18 has partnered with philanthropic organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and BBC Media Action to create a general entertainment fiction series with an underlying behaviour change message on sanitation.

Produced by Swastik Productions, the 26-episode finite series Navrangi Re! tells a powerful story to address an urgent issue faced by urban India. It is the story of a congested mohalla (a neighbourhood) in a town in Northern India full of real, but quirky characters. Vishwaas, the hero, played by actor Aamir Ali, is a struggling TV journalist who is not able to deliver breaking news stories and finds his job on the line. But in this hunt for stories, he discovers the gateway to bring about change for his Mohalla, aided by a few others.

The storyline aims to bring real development issues to the masses in an entertaining format, issues that the partners say are otherwise packaged in typical research or data reports, which oftentimes do not reach the mass audience.

The series will go on-air, bi-weekly, over 13 weeks from January 2019 on Viacom18 network’s Rishtey Hindi General entertainment channel, COLORS Gujarati and COLORS Odia. The show will be the first original production on Rishtey and will also be available on the network’s OTT platform VOOT.

“We at Viacom18 believe in the power of partnerships to effect impact at scale,” said Group CEO and MD Sudhanshu Vats. “With Navrangi Re! we are creating a platform that aptly uses the medium of entertainment to bring in mass behaviour change. Sanitation has been a cause that we are closely associated with....We hope to engage our audiences with powerful storytelling.”

“We are very excited about working with Viacom18 and BBC Media Action on Navrangi Re!,” added Madhu Krishna, India country lead, WSH, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “In our mission to inspire people to take action to change the world, we partner with government, non-profits, academic institutions, and private sector. However, this is the first time that Gates Foundation has partnered with a satellite television network in India. ‘Navrangi Re!’ is an innovative approach to engage TV viewing audiences, digital citizens and social media users on sanitation issues.”

“BBC Media Action has created narrative-based interventions across the world, in partnership with public and private sector media networks that deliver a message but still entertain, and bring back viewers week after week,: remarked Radharani Mitra, global creative advisor, BBC Media Action That’s where the power of storytelling and compelling content come in.”