The New Hero of Indian Television

A Bollywood superstar has channeled his social conscience into a surprise hit show
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304550004577510613053552278.html 

By AATISH TASEER

On Indian TV, there has never been anything quite like "Truth Alone Prevails." Since its debut in May, the weekly show has reached more than 470 million viewers with its inquiries into issues like pesticides in food, domestic violence and the abortion of female fetuses. Within moments of airing, each episode trends at No. 1 on Twitter in India. Ten million people have sent text messages, emails and comments to the show's website to share their questions, opinions and fears.

Photos: Aamir Khan, On Screen and On The Streets

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Associated Press

A selection of moments in Khan's off-screen career.

In two Indian states, the show has prompted governments to bolster the enforcement of existing laws, and a few weeks ago the show's host was called to testify before a parliamentary committee after an episode on medical malpractice. The scale of the response has made "Satyamev Jayate" (as the show is called in Hindi) more like a people's movement than a television show.

More astonishing is the fact that this social and political phenomenon is the work of Aamir Khan, a superstar of India's giant film industry. At 47, Mr. Khan combines something of the glamour and social concern of George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Like many Bollywood actors, he made his name dancing around trees and singing in the rain, but over the years he has turned to more serious things. Three years ago he had a great success with "3 Idiots," a comedy about the mind-numbing state of Indian education. Now, having turned down offers to do the game shows that many actors of his standing have taken up, he has created something startling and altogether new in India.

Hindustan Times Via Getty Images

testifying to a parliamentary panel on June 21.

The format of "Truth Alone Prevails" is simple. (The show airs on the Star network, which, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.) Mr. Khan introduces the issue of the day to a live studio audience; a short video is shown, featuring a real-world case of hardship or injustice; and then, with only a modest amount of television wizardry, the lights come up and the person from the video is on stage, seated opposite Mr. Khan. And they begin to talk. Mr. Khan does not dazzle the audience with his star power; for the most part, he just listens. It is his guests, often heartbreakingly ordinary, who do the talking.

What emerges from their stories is a creeping horror, a vision of modern India that is stark and deeply unsettling: the family whose mother's life is snatched away, they say, in a botched and unauthorized organ transplant; the 12-year-old girl who accuses a 55-year-old family friend of sexual abuse; the call-center worker who tells of the forced abortion of her female fetuses—six times in eight years—at the hands of her husband's family. Mr. Khan's style is wry and laid back, but occasionally the stories are too much for him, and his eyes well with tears.

“Though all manner of cruelty and casual violence are on display, the show is essentially uplifting.”

India has not always been comfortable looking this hard at itself. Mr. Khan's show indicates a new candor and boldness, and the response has been staggering. As he told me, "We used to sit back, my team and I, and discuss how people would react, what they would feel. And the kind of response we dreamed of, and hoped for, that is exactly what we're getting." He admits to being emotionally drained by the show at times: "There's a lot of trauma, a lot of distress, a lot of injustice" out there, he said, and he has yet to commit to a second season. But he also says that he encountered an "equal number of examples of courage, high levels of integrity and deeply honed values."

Critics have accused Mr. Khan of being far less reliable on scientific issues than he is on social ones. Some also say that the show is preachy, even messianic, and that its research is not always up to scratch. After Mr. Khan's episode on malpractice, the medical community raised a furor, and the doctor accused of the unauthorized organ transplant is now threatening the show with legal action.

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But most Indians seem to share the view of Shekhar Gupta, the editor in chief of the Indian Express, who believes that the show's emphasis on social justice compensates for its shortcomings. "The most important thing is that people are now willing to talk about what's wrong with them," he told me. And Mr. Khan "holds a mirror up to the society; that's a remarkable thing."

The success of "Truth Alone Prevails" is very much a function of India's rising prosperity over the past decades. Since the early 1990s, a middle class of several hundred million has emerged, and its members are increasingly willing to voice their outrage over the familiar tragedies of life in India. Among them, "Truth Alone Prevails" has an almost religious appeal. As one blogger wrote, in response to media criticism of the show, "If someone tries to do something good for the society, you guys could not bear it.... People need someone to follow, to show them the right path."

This reaction represents a strange truth about the show (and perhaps about India too): Though all manner of cruelty and casual violence are on display, it is essentially uplifting.

What gives "Truth Alone Prevails" its optimism is the voice of India's new middle class, which is increasingly politically and socially aware, though still unsure of itself and its newfound wealth and security. If the old India of my childhood—which was a far bleaker place—is to be superseded, it will depend on this new class's ability to understand and defend the freedoms that have enriched it. Mr. Khan's achievement has been to use his celebrity to show Indians, with rare clarity and grittiness, how far the country has come, and how far it has yet to go.
—Mr. Taseer's "Stranger to History" will be published this fall by Graywolf. He lives in New Delhi and London.
Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this story said the film '3 Idiots' came out two years ago, but it was released three years ago in 2009.

A version of this article appeared July 7, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The New Hero of Indian Television.

Forbes India: How Aamir sold 3 Idiots

Forbes India: How Aamir sold 3 Idiots
Elizabeth Flock / Forbes India
Published on Fri, Feb 05, 2010 at 13:16, Updated on Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 09:19 in Business section

When Aamir Khan, producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and director Rajkumar Hirani, sat down and watched the first half of the first cut of 3 Idiots together, they knew they were watching something that had the potential to go “big time”. A boisterous drama about three friends dealing with the pressures of engineering school, and one friend teaching them how to dream, was a story they knew would stick. They guessed multiplexes in cities would overflow. They figured they had a fair chance at beating Ghajini, an Aamir Khan starrer and the biggest grossing Hindi film of all time.

But something bothered them. In smaller towns, regional cinema was still king and Hindi cinema just a joker. In Gujarat, a star like Vikram Thakur at his peak, could bring in close to Rs 7 crore. A top grossing Hindi film on the other hand could hope to rake in just Rs 3 crore.

“We felt we aren’t connecting enough with our audience… There’s a business capacity of seven, but we are only doing three. So there’s a lot of business we aren’t reaching out to,” says Khan as he talks to us from his Pali Hill apartment in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb. He’s wincing from a leg injury sustained earlier during the day, but is intent we hear what he’s saying.

“Do they want to be entertained? Yes. Do they like watching films? Yes. But are they watching our films? No. They’re watching regional films.” It could only mean two things, he reasoned. One, Hindi films aren’t marketed well. And two, film makers from Mumbai don’t understand small town India. Khan was determined to figure out both answers. But how?

The ball begins to roll
When a team of 25 marketing people met in August 2009, led by Prabhat Choudhary of Spice PR, who helped market four of the top five all time hits of Hindi cinema, the team didn’t know what the central idea to market 3 Idiots could possibly be. Khan’s brief though was clear. Whatever they did, they had to get to the man in Bhopal, and the man in Varanasi.

For a while, Khan had been toying with a rather vague idea. The movie starts with Aamir Khan, who essays the role of the central protagonist, having disappeared into oblivion. The rest of the flick is about his friends looking for clues to find him. How, Khan wondered, would people react if he disappeared in real life? Would people wonder where he was? Would the media write speculative stories on Khan’s whereabouts? But more importantly, how could the whole thing be orchestrated?

Through all of August last year, they debated on the plan. They tied up with online gaming firm Zapak. And that was where they found the answer: A-R-G, or Alternate Reality Gaming. Participants in these games interact directly with characters in the game, work with other participants to solve challenges, analyse the story and stay connected on email, telephones, and the internet. The main narrative for this form of gaming is usually based in the real world.

By September, ARG took over 60 percent of 3 Idiots’ marketing efforts. A Facebook profile “Amir the Pucca Idiot” was created, a page that would be controlled and updated entirely by Khan. It became a talking point because it was the first time an Indian celebrity had done this. People wondered whether it really was Aamir Khan’s page. His status updates appeared in the papers. “Aamir the Pucca Idiot” would be an instrumental part of Khan’s disappearance to remote B towns, too.

By October, the 3 Idiots team had to activate the game. Before that, teams needed to be dispatched to do a recce of all the places Khan would visit during his disappearing act. They would be dispatched to small towns in Gujarat, Punjab, Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh, among others. It would be expensive and logistics would be a nightmare. “We’d only marketed to 6-8 metros,” Chaudhary told Khan. “But there are 80 towns with at least one multiplex we had never even marketed to.”

Of doodles and bum chairs
By October, two months before the release of 3 Idiots, no one knew much about the movie. There were no hoardings. No signs at theaters. And to build the suspense, multiplexes were sent bum chairs (like the ones the 3 Idiots sit on in the film); stickers that read “You are the 4th idiot”. No one knew what it all meant.
But on October 30, the 3 Idiots team made their first break of communication. They launched the film’s trailer to a gathering of trade people, multiplexes, and media. Ghajini was in the media for a year and a half before it released. 3 Idiots would only be in the media for two months.

In December, Khan was also busy designing T-shirts. “I said I can’t design, I’m not a designer, but I can give you my doodles,” says Khan. Pantaloon created a T-shirt line with the doodles, and 3 Idiots Converse sneakers.

Featuring Khan’s doodles instead of just replica merchandise worked. Pantaloon sold more than 1000 pieces per day in its opening week, and then sold out of the merchandise twice. The doodle T-shirt was also created as a gift friends could send to one another on “Aamir the Pucca Idiot” Facebook page, whose profile now had almost 2 lakh fans.

BusinessofCinema (BoC), who did the digital marketing, launched the Pantaloon gifts on Facebook, plus ticketing applications, and 3 Idiots videos and songs. Most of all, BoC readied themselves for the launch of the ARG game. And then, on December 12, Aamir Khan disappeared.

Director Hirani and Producer Chopra claimed not to know where he was. All that was left behind was a video on the film’s website, idiotsacademy.com. “I shot a video, and I said, ‘If you want to be a part of this of game, well... For two weeks, I will be traveling around the country. I will appear seven places, will give you seven clues to find me. For the first clue you need to get it from Sachin Tendulkar.’ And then I kiss my wife goodbye and walk out the door,” says Khan.

I am not here
Khan first reappeared in Varanasi, disguised as an old man. “I couldn’t tell anyone who I was,” he says. The 3I team shot footage of what he was doing, but no TV stations could find him. Choudhary worried, “How will media take it? Will they think it’s a gimmick to ignore?” And at every stage, someone on the team said this would not work.

It didn’t help that a lot of the 3I recce team’s planning didn’t work out. Choudhary broke his collarbone in a rickshaw accident. Instead of spending the night at Varanasi station as planned, Khan decided to find his mother’s home in Varanasi.
“I really went to Varanasi to make friends over there. It had to be a genuine process. I didn’t know who I would meet or how they would react to me. It was happening organically,” explains Khan. He talks for more than an hour about Varanasi, recounting the story of a rickshaw driver he calls “damn funny”, and the four men who help him find his mother’s house.

After Khan left Varanasi, he let it be known he was there. 20,000 people trampled the tea shop where Khan had just been. The local media went crazy. “They found the story fascinating because they saw how unplanned the whole thing was. The English media picked it up only four times in those two weeks, but Hindi news channels and local print and TV media went ballistic. I was on the front page. They would report every new clue we announced, and interview the people I had met,” says Khan.

Khan not only evaded the media, but also goaded them. “I had been given the names of 15 editors in each city. So when I left their city, I wrote each of them handwritten letters on my letterhead that said ‘I was passing through your city and felt like having sweets. So I bought some mithai and got you some as well. Love, Aamir’. It was a like a tease,” Khan says and smiles.

Khan gave only four interviews to TV stations during the entire tour, all to regional TV stations. Regional stars were selected to interview Khan. On Mahua TV in UP, for example, Bhojpuri star Ravi Kishnan interviewed Khan. “Other than those four, I thought TV stations shouldn’t get me. All they get is what I shoot and send to them. I don’t have a deal with them, so I don’t know if they will bite. But I had not been available, so I knew they were thirsty for me,” says Khan.

The strategy was deployed for the print media as well. He stayed clear of mainstream English dailies and spoke very selectively to regional newspapers. For the first time in recent history, B towns were clamouring for an upcoming Hindi film.

Final notes
When they started, the ARG game was just a small part of Khan’s disappearance. It was more like a contact program, “something like what Obama would have undertaken,” explains Choudhary. But soon, many fans found out about idiotsacademy.com. They learned to play the ARG (a first ever for a Hindi film), competing against one another to find out where Khan was. Fans played other games on the website, too, racking up around 4.5 million plays, says Rohit Sharma of Zapak, which designed the game.

And not once during Khan’s journey was 3 Idiots mentioned. When he went to a girls’ school in Palanpur, Gujarat, to highlight the importance of the girl child’s education, Khan asked the girls to shout their message to TV cameras. “The girls didn’t say ‘3 Idiots releases on December 25!” Khan laughs. Instead, they said girls need as much a chance to go to school as boys do. “Now people will either connect to that or say the guy is bullshitting. I think we made a strong emotional connect.”While Khan was in the middle of this journey, and excitement was at a peak, “Aamir Khan the Pucca Idiot” decided to hold a Facebook live chat with fans. Khan would be on video, and fans could type in from Twitter, Facebook, and Youstream.

The BoC guys expected Khan’s live chat to happen from Mumbai. At the last minute, they were told to take their hi-tech equipment to Delhi and then set it up in a small village outside.

On December 19th, without a single hitch in streaming, more than 1 lakh users chatted with Khan from Pakistan, Bangladesh, the US, and cities and many B towns in India. It was the first time an Indian celebrity had done something like this. Over 300,000 status updates were shared that day, according to Facebook’s international communications team. On Twitter, #AamirKhanLive was the sixth most buzzed keyword in the world.

Six days after the chat, 3 Idiots was finally released.

How much could all of this have worked? The biggest opening any film had ever had was Ghajini, with a first day collection across India of 9 crore. 3 Idiots’ collected Rs. 13 crore on the first day. Over that weekend, the collections added up to Rs. 100 crore. The film was watched in 40 countries. Nineteen days after release, the film set a box office record for the industry, grossing Rs. 315 crore worldwide. It is the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, not adjusted for inflation. As we go to print, 3 Idiots had grossed Rs. 365 crore.
Khan didn’t forget Vikram Thakur and his magic number: Rs. 7 crore. 3 Idiots beat it by a mile at Rs. 9 crore. Choudhary says from Ghajini to 3 Idiots there’s been a 30 percent jump in collections in B towns like Benares, Bhopal, and in Faridkot.

Last weekend, Chance pe Dance was released. Its net collections on the first day release were 2.15 crore for all India. 3 Idiots got 2.75 crore that day, meaning it’s still number one three weeks after release.