There’s nothing quite like the power of an earworm. A good earworm can follow you through the day – all the way from your morning shower, your commute, the long and boring team meeting the boss insisted on, and back on home to dinner.
As any teacher will tell you, most of learning is repetition. The more you repeat something, the stronger your neural connections, the easier it becomes to access this information over time. Think about your signature. There was a time in your life when you practised signing your name so it would become consistent. Now that it has, you don’t even need to keep your eyes on the page as you sign!
So if repetition is the key to learning well, and earworms cause your brain to repeat the same information over and over, could songs be leveraged as teaching aids?! Yes, and they have. Remember nursery rhymes? Your favourite ad jingle? The mnemonic you used to memorise large chunks of information for your exams?
Songs have power. Popular songs have the power to sway opinion. By tapping into our emotions and shared experiences, impactful songs can shift popular opinion and galvanise movements.
The song, ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ was originally written as a church hymn in 1897, became an anthem of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It was later incorporated into the national anthems of five countries in Africa including Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia and Zimbabwe after independence, and South Africa after the end of apartheid.
Closer to home, ‘Vande Mataram’, first sung by Rabindranath Tagore at the 1896 Indian National Congress session, became a powerful anthem for India’s independence movement. It instilled a sense of patriotism and defiance against colonial rule, with its popularity leading to bans and arrests of those who sang it in public.
More recently, India has been fighting for a different cause – a clean and safe toilet for every Indian. In 10 years, the Swachh Bharat Mission has engendered a sea change in the way we view sanitation. Today, there is a toilet for every Indian. But does every Indian know how to use a toilet safely and cleanly? Do they know how to practise safe hygiene? Do they understand the link between poor sanitation and disease outbreaks?
That is the work ahead of us now. And fortunately, the Govt of India is not alone in this. Harpic, as India’s leading brand in the lavatory care segment has been doing its share of heavy lifting where communication is concerned. For decades now, Harpic’s thought provoking campaigns have educated and informed India on how to appropriately care for themselves and their families, by caring for their toilet. 3 years ago, Harpic joined hands with News18 to create Mission Swachhta aur Paani, a movement that champions the cause of inclusive sanitation, equality for all genders, abilities, castes and classes and the strong belief that clean toilets are a shared responsibility.
Mission Swachhta aur Paani has been a path breaking effort in mobilising a mass movement to promote better sanitation, and hygiene by bringing together the right stakeholders on a common platform, so that issues of importance can be discussed, and solutions found. In its search for more effective ways to communicate, inspire and inform various groups, Mission Swachhta aur Paani has partnered with several artists and storytellers.
One such artist is three-time Grammy Award-winning Indian music composer and environmentalist, Ricky Kej, who has used his music to raise awareness about environmental issues, especially climate change. In addition to being a prolific musician, he serves as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and a High-Profile Supporter of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He has also been appointed as a UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) Global Ambassador for Kindness, a UNICEF Celebrity Supporter, and an ambassador for the Earth Day Network.
Kej has created multiple songs and albums focused on environmental themes, including “MyEarth”, “Breathe Life”, and his collaboration with UNICEF India called “LiFE Song” promotes the Mission LiFE initiative for environmental preservation. And now, he’s turning his prodigious talent towards the issue of sanitation.
At the event celebrating the culmination of Mission Swachhta aur Paani, Season 3, Ricky Kej and a troupe of artists performed the new Swachhta aur Paani anthem, acapella style. The song is catchy, immensely hummable, and has all the characteristics of a good earworm. Kej’s hope is that with the right messages in everyone’s ear, repetition creates habits that lift us up as a nation.
Earlier in the event, Kej participated in a panel discussion on Charting the Path Forward for a Swachh & Swasth Bharat, where he observed, “The Swachh Bharat Mission changed a lot of mindsets, it made cleanliness cooler, it brought national pride to cleanliness and sanitation and it made us believe that it is our collective responsibility to keep our surroundings clean. If I don’t practise safe sanitation, I am affecting the health of everyone around me! India is on the path to becoming a superpower, and that just won’t be possible if we aren’t a healthy nation. There’s a clear connection between sanitation and the health of the environment. I channelled all of these thoughts into this anthem, and I directed it towards the youth as they are often more ready to adopt new healthy practices, and inspire older people into action.”
In a nutshell, that has also been Mission Swachhta aur Paani’s objective these past 3 years: to educate, inform, empower and inspire people to take up the mantle of sanitation. While the Swachh Bharat Mission has solved the infrastructure problem by constructing toilets for each of us, the mindset problem still looms large. There are still those in our society who need to be convinced to use a toilet, still others who are convinced but don’t know how, still others who use toilets but do so in a manner that inconveniences others, and still others who are falling ill as a result of poor toilet hygiene practices.
As Season 3 draws to a close, we pass the baton to you, dear reader. What you talk about matters. Mission Swachhta aur Paani serves as a repository of information that helps you have the right conversations with the right parties. And if having the conversation is too daunting, maybe just play them a song – we’ve got just the right one for you!
Join us here to listen to the Swachhta aur Paani anthem by Ricky Kej, and to discover all the resources that Mission Swachhta aur Paani makes available to you. There are so many ways that each of us can contribute to the larger mission. We hope you find your way to help bring us closer to a Swasth and Swachh Bharat.