Inspired by the entertainment-education radio soap opera, Taru, a family from the upper-caste brahmin community in Bihar, India, allowed men from the lower caste dalit community to serve water to guests during their daughter's wedding. While most social change projects achieve first-order change, that is, change within a system which itself remains unchanged, Taru seemed to have engendered second-order changes, that is, changing the system itself. The present article investigates how Taru generated second-order changes in Bihar, distilling lessons for how entertainment-education programmes can be strategically positioned to create and sustain systemic social change.
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