Holding hands all the way

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Film stars and youth role models come together in a BBC World Trust Service funded series on Doordarshan, India's state broadcaster.

* Udipi-based Shanti Noronha's husband died of AIDS; she is HIV positive but runs a district level network of positive people. She's also a great fan of film actress Shilpa Shetty.

* Stanzin Dawa runs an AIDS/HIV awareness NGO in Ladakh, is a student at Punjab University in Chandigarh, and thinks Viveik Oberoi is the best thing on the Bollywood screen since sliced bread.

* In conservative Rajasthan, plucky Prachi Rathore has dedicated herself to raising AIDS/HIV awareness; something that so impressed Raveena Tandon, the actress invited her to share her message from the Stardust Film Awards dais.

These young ambassadors and role models, carefully chosen from the thousands of NGOs doing humanitarian work in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness, were among the 16 handpicked by creative director Anu Malhotra for a BBC World Service Trust sponsored programme on Doordarshan.

"The Trust," says BBC country head Andrew Whitehead, "has had an MoU with NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation) and Doordarshan since 2001." And as part of that exercise, the British Development Aid has given the Trust £4.5 million, to be spent on three kinds of programming and research, to be spent up to March 2007.

These include 53 episodes for the 15.5 million strong audience of the detective serial Jasoos Vijay that is aired on prime time Sunday nights (with a repeat on Monday), 10 new public service ads, also aired on Doordarshan, and kickstarting today, a new series called Haath Se Haath Milaa.

Haath has been created and formatted by Anu Malhotra in a huge departure from her travel films and documentaries, as a result of which she has taken a year's sabbatical from her company, AIM TV, to do what she herself laughs off as a cliche "" "meaningful work".

Aimed at a young audience, in an attempt to spread awareness about a disease that has afflicted over 5 million people already in the country, Malhotra says her agenda was simple.

"I wanted to do a programme entertaining enough to get high TRPs, weave in the AIDS/HIV awareness message into the episodes seamlessly, and make the episodes inspiring."

Her solution was to combine real life heroes with reel life heroes. "I decided to use Bollywood as the key entertainment focus to get the eyeballs, to use their intrinsic strength, which is acting," she said on the eve of the programme's airing.

"I thought I'd get them to interact with youth achievers who can e possible role models from real life." Searching amidst people involved with outreach work "" "people who are unnoticed, unappreciated, unrecognised" "" in the field of HIV/AIDS, she got these "yuva stars" to tell their stories, link them with the stars' lives, create opportunities to test their challenges on the ground, and knit together stories that range from the poignant to the dramatic.

Each episode is 20 minutes long, and three episodes tell a complete story. "The message that comes through," Malhotra believes, "is very powerful. Our 16 yuva stars each have the potential to be ambassadors for the cause."

The series uses a title track with lyrics by Javed Akhtar, music by Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy, and sung by Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghosal. Stars from Fardeen Khan and Zayed Khan to John Abraham, Tabu, Neha Dhupia, Shilpa Shetty, Raveena Tandon and others have offered their services pro-bono. "Bollywood stars," says Andrew Whitehead, "take their responsibilities really seriously."

Why Doordarshan? "Because," says Whitehead, "Doordardhan has the largest reach, vastly more than any other channel," and because the audience profile the subliminal messages are aimed at in particular is DD's stock-in-trade "" small town and rural.

"Eventually though," he insists, "we're more concerned with the impact of the programmes rather than the quanity of the audience."

With India considered the "next wave" country after South Africa where HIV could spread quickly, clearly interventions such as these are timely.

Now, to see what audiences have to say tonight.