Editorial: A picture speaks a thousand words

A recent example involves the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s dramatic messaging campaign on Twitter to inform people about the continued need for masking. The no-frills poster features an illustration of a finger pointed at the reader with the caption, ‘You, yes You! Have you worn a face mask today?’ 

The pop-art flavoured poster closely resembles the I Want ‘You’ for US Army poster from 1917, featuring Uncle Sam, which was used in America to recruit soldiers for both World War I and World War II. The idea that a picture is worth a thousand words was imbibed early on by the Indian government as well. The nation has a history of running memorable public service announcement (PSA) campaigns since the early years of Independence. For instance, it was in the 60s, that India’s Health Ministry adopted the inverted red triangle as the symbol for family planning health and contraception services. The brainchild of Deep Tyagi, an Assistant Commissioner for the Indian Family Planning programme until 1969, the symbol was adopted by developing nations in Asia and Africa where it was used outside shops and clinics that offer access to reproductive health services and family planning products. In India, it became associated with the population control mantra - ‘We two, ours two.’ Many of the mass communication protocols devised by Tyagi have become a mainstay of disease combatting PSAs in developing countries. 

But triangles soon made way for animation as India fast-forwarded to the 70s when Doordarshan had just about completed a few years of regular daily transmission. In 1974, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which is the authority that publishes textbooks that are prescribed by the CBSE, came up with an animation video titled Ek Anek Aur Ekta or ‘One, Many, and Unity’. A stellar example of the power of bare-bones hand-drawn animation, the video in a simple song and dance format, imparts the importance of unity in diversity and sticking together, to children. Now, in the age of Twitter and Instagram, the government is slowly but surely waking up to the benefits of communicating using a stronger visual language, as opposed to drab old text and dated pictograms. 

Here in Chennai, at the start of the pandemic, the City Corporation witnessed a rise in the number of followers on Twitter when it updated its social media page with hygiene awareness cartoons that included superheroes from the DC/Marvel comic book universes. The illustrations which included the likes of The Hulk, Loki, Batman, and Robin donning facemasks, and featured speech bubbles in both Tamil and English struck a chord with children and adults across the board in a double whammy of sorts for the government, who caught its audiences young. More recently, Tamil Nadu’s school education department announced that school teachers in the state were set to undergo graphic designing courses as an add-on to improve their online teaching methods. 

While there may be challenges in comprehending the efficacy of any campaign - the fact remains that images have a longer shelf life, and can be understood by a cross-section of society, cutting across age and language barriers, as compared to textual alternatives, as these recent developments remind us. The government must consider extending this culture of simple, informal messaging to other aspects of our daily lives, whether it’s in matters concerning taxation, availing of services at e-Seva Kendras, applying for a new voter’s ID or old-age pension or even registering a complaint at the police station. It could go a long way in ensuring inclusivity at a grassroots level.