The application, blamed for all kinds of mayhem on the subcontinent, has proved a boon for farmers, home cooks and chefs who once lacked a way to share.
Anil
Bandawane, a farmer living outside Pune, India, was fed up with the
poor advice he was getting from the government’s national hotline
for agricultural queries. Life as a farmer in India can be isolating,
and he felt cut off from his peers.
So
he started a WhatsApp
group called Baliraja (which roughly means “farmer king” in the
Marathi language). The group, which allows his fellow farmers across
the country to exchange expertise and support on the popular
messaging platform, gained so much traction that Mr. Bandawane has
created more than a dozen different subgroups for various districts.
To
the south, in the state of Kerala, Bharathy Gopalakrishnan, a
stay-at-home mother, wanted to make a little money from some leftover
red-velvet cupcakes. That idea turned into PB Kitchen, a WhatsApp
group she founded to allow the women in her apartment complex to buy
and sell one another’s homemade dishes, from sambars and vadas to
burgers and cakes.
Around
the same time, Krishna Prasad, the director of an organic-agriculture
advocacy group, and Abhishek Naik, a scientist, were looking for a
way to share healthy recipes and information about organic food. So
they created a group a WhatsApp group, Anna Arogya (“food for good
health” in Kannada).
It
has been three years since India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi,
started Digital India, an initiative to increase internet
connectivity across the country, especially in rural areas. WhatsApp,
which is owned by Facebook, has become the medium of choice: It is
free, requires only an internet connection, and often comes installed
on new phones. As a result, India now has more users of the
application — over 200 million, or one in six Indians — than any
other country, a WhatsApp spokeswoman said.
That
saturation has often led to misuse: Various groups have deployed
WhatsApp to spread false news, incite mob violence and manipulate
votes during elections in India and other nations.
But
among Indians who produce, cook or care about food, the service has
been a godsend. In a country where culinary traditions are often
spoken but not written, WhatsApp has provided an open, democratic
forum where Indians can share and codify their knowledge and skills,
in new ways, and even profit from them.
“One
of the problems with documenting Indian
food is that the people who prepare it” — mainly homemakers,
farmers and young cooks — “tend to be less empowered and less
formally educated,” said Vikram Doctor, 51, a journalist in Mumbai.
“They just don’t document. They are not comfortable using a
computer or blogging, or people just don’t ask them.”
WhatsApp’s
interface is simple and unfussy, with easy-to-navigate tabs for
messages and calls. Aysha Tanya, 29, a founder of the food and
culture publication The Goya Journal, said she uses WhatsApp to get
recipes from her mother, because it’s the only digital platform
that people her mother’s age feel confident using.
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