In urban slums such as Mumbai’s Dharavi, social distancing is impossible. One million people live within an area of just 2.1 square kilometres. A single water tap is touched by 200 people during the course of the day. Livelihoods depend on daily wage earners working outdoors.

The only way to limit the spread of COVID-19 is for residents to stay isolated and adopt restrictive social behaviours.

Already reeling from a first wave of infections, a failure to control the spread in Dharavi would result in unimaginable consequences for India.

Long-time partners of the government in a range of social and community projects, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BGMF) pledged to support the authorities in tackling this problem. The Non-Profit needed a creative solution to educate the people of Dharavi in ways that are sensitive to their unique circumstances but impactful in effecting behavioral change.

While they speak different languages and have different religious beliefs, the communities within Dharavi share a common way of life and will to survive. Their struggles were dramatized in the 2019 Bollywood hit film “Gully Boy”, which told the story of an aspiring street rapper from Dharavi who sought a better life through music.

The film ignited interest in the underground rap and dance subculture of the slums. Not unlike New York’s The Bronx, Mumbai’s Dharavi has emerged as a hotbed of urban musical talent.

Additionally. India’s low-cost smartphone industry has democratized mobile entertainment and communications. Over 340 million people in India use WhatsApp – the highest in the world – and in the slums, the app is used to share videos, music and even the latest Bollywood films. These insights inspired our big idea: educate the people of Dharavi with shareable, entertaining content in which they are

Our PR strategy was driven by two key truths:

• The only way to curb the spread is to make people realize that only they had the power to protect themselves.

• Nobody could engage and express empathy with the people of Dharavi better than those who actually live there.

So we combined culture, humour, rhyme and hope to create an easily understood social distancing and prevention movement instigated and championed by one of their own.

Enter Gully Gang, a hip-hop collective whose members come from Dharavi. Working with them, we conceived a rap anthem titled #StayHomeStaySafe, with a clear, easily understood message delivered in the three languages most widely spoken in Dharavi: Tamil, Marathi and Hindi. It lyricized the need for social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing in a catchy and un-patronizing way.

#StayHomeStaySafe was launched with a music video that features the artists with world-famous Bollywood celebrities, who lip synced some of its hard-hitting lines. In a world where Bollywood stars are hero worshipped, their involvement greatly amplified the spread. The track was dropped on YouTube in May 2020 and was made available to download on Spotify, Apple Music as well as Indian music streaming platforms Gaana (India's largest commercial music streaming service with over 200 million monthly users) and JioSaavn.

Along with the original music, we also produced posters for common areas like toilets, as well as GIF images with easily understood animations and videos of survivors of COVID-19 – all carrying prevention tips that reflected the realities of Dharavi. These were made shareable on WhatsApp, helping ensure that WHO guidelines were shared widely among people of the slums, and were easily understood by those who could not read and write.

Combined with government-imposed measures, the campaign was instrumental in preventing a disastrous outcome in Dharavi. In his remarks on 10 July 2020, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom highlighted Dharavi as one of the places where authorities have been successful in managing the control of the virus.

Dharavi’s unlikely success in containing the spread of COVID-19 became the subject of analyses by top international media including the BBC, TIME, and Los Angeles Times as well as local titles.

By Christmas, the tally of total active cases in Dharavi stood at a just 12 – remarkable given Dharavi’s compact environment with nearly 1 million inhabitants and when other parts of India were experiencing huge surges.

The music video was Viewed 58 million times by the end of the year and is now used by the Indian government as a PSA tool across 26 states.