Whether it’s George Clooney on the
crisis in Sudan or Angelina Jolie on the
Millennium Development Goals,
international celebrities aren’t shy
about weighing in on pressing social
issues close to their heart. That phenomenon now seems to have
come to India too, in a big way. I’m of course referring to Aamir Khan’s
talk show “Satyameva Jayate” and
spinoff syndicated newspaper column.
In just its first four episodes, the show
has looked unflinchingly at female
feticide, sexual abuse of children, dowry and most recently the failures
of public healthcare in India. These
aren’t new issues that Mr. Khan is
bringing to light — television, print
and social media have dealt with such
issues and many others for some time. But it is the first time that an A-list
celebrity has tackled such a range of
issues in a weekly talk show in Hindi
aimed at the vast bulk of television
viewers. Undoubtedly these are important, but
after watching the most recent
episode, I started wondering whether
the involvement of a celebrity such as
Mr. Khan makes a real difference on
the ground? To put it bluntly, is it entertainment or is it a new way of
promoting public policy? Or is Mr. Khan
merely stepping into a vacuum created
by the disarray in the traditional
political space and the apparent
fizzling out of Anna Hazare’s anticorruption crusade? On the surface at least, Mr. Khan does
appear to be having an impact. In the
immediate aftermath of the show’s first
episode, there was a political reaction
in Rajasthan state, which had been
singled out for its high incidence of female feticide. The state’s chief
minister acknowledged that the show had created awareness about the
problem, while more recently , the Sarpanch, or head of a local council, in
one village reportedly took up the
issue and formed a six member
committee to monitor pregnant
women in the community, and if
necessary file police cases against people suspected of engaging in
female feticide. He explicitly refers to
Mr. Khan’s television show as his
inspiration. Echoing this sentiment, most people
believe that celebrities do have an
impact on people’s behavior. But
economists and other social scientists
find it hard to pin down the exact
mechanisms. It used to be thought by social psychologists and sociologist
that celebrities affected behavior very
directly, in that people tended to
identify with their favorite stars and
listen to what they had to say. The
world over, marketing people obviously believe this, since they pay
huge sums to sports stars, movie stars
and other celebrities to endorse
products. More recent research suggests that the
effect could be more subtle and
indirect. A 2011 studyby three Dutch behavioral scholars, Siegwart
Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and
Diederik A. Stapel, argues that
celebrities affect people not so much
through identification, but rather
through their effect on social norms. More specifically, they suggest that a
celebrity endorsement of a good
cause “activates” a social norm that
might have been passive. For instance,
in an experiment, two Dutch
celebrities, a male sportsman and a female television personality,
endorsed a campaign against littering.
This appeared to have an impact on
the preferences of their test subjects
(university students) to keeping the
environment clean. Interestingly, their research also showed that a celebrity’s
impact had this effect if he or she
received positive publicity, but
disappeared and even went the other
way if a celebrity’s image had been
tarnished. The apparent early success of Mr. Khan
as an advocate of causes he cares
about does seem to fit this research.
Unlike other Bollywood personalities
with rather colorful and checkered
public profiles, Mr. Khan has maintained a squeaky clean image
and has never been embroiled in the
kinds of legal or other controversies
that have overtaken some of his peers.
And as the Dutch research suggests, a
viewer of his show wouldn’t have to identify with Mr. Khan to be affected by
his message. But creating awareness on the one
hand and having a meaningful impact
on policy or outcomes on the other
are very different. The well-meaning
Sarpanch planning to file police cases
against women who may have practiced female feticide might end up
punishing people who are victims
themselves. In patriarchal societies
women may be coerced by their
families to engage in female feticide or,
for that matter, sex selective abortion. An overzealous local official looking to
file police cases might well miss out on
this important possibility.
Paradoxically, good intentions
inspired by Mr. Khan’s television show
might not lead to good outcomes if the response by officials is clumsy and
heavy-handed. Ironically enough, the
women profiled in the show’s episode
on female feticide gave wrenching
accounts of being forced to do engage
in feticide under pressure from their families. While the involvement of high profile
celebrities certainly helps bring
awareness and financial resources to
their cherished causes, it’s much less
clear that the remedies they’re backing
make good economic or political sense. For instance, economists
fiercely debate the merits of the
Millennium Development Goals, but if
you were to take celebrity
endorsements at their word, achieving
these is synonymous with economic development itself. Mr. Khan’s most recent show on
healthcare and his syndicated column seem already to be veering in the
direction of oversimplification and
caricature. While he’s right to point to
the ills of the public health care system
in India, his proposed remedy is
nothing other than the orthodox left wing prescription of pouring more
resources into the government run
sector and tightening control on
private medical colleges. But to be fair to Mr. Khan, it would be
difficult to bring in a great deal of
subtlety and nuance as well as the
necessary follow-up when tackling
major new social problem every week.
Perhaps it’s just sophisticated entertainment, after all.

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