Although the app has become a tool to cut through the red tape and drive change, there is the fear that governance is over-responsive to one section

: Last year, when a woman went on her morning walk in north Bengaluru, two men on a motorbike accosted her and snatched her gold chain. She posted the details of the incident on a local WhatsApp group, which comprises beat policemen and residents.

Within minutes, policemen and volunteers were on the streets. The chain snatchers were apprehended before they could leave the neighbourhood.

In July this year, fed up with potholed roads and the threat they posed to motorists, residents of HSR Layout launched a campaign, #PotholePooje. In a telling gesture, prayers were offered to potholes. As they discussed the strategy on a local Whatsapp group, civic officials, who were members of that group, got the message. Potholes were soon filled.

Such stories play out every day across the city as residents’ associations use social media to bridge the gap between citizens and those who govern them. Bengaluru — which may have lost the race to be declared a ‘Smart City’ — is turning ‘smart.’ Whatsapp has become a tool to cut through the red tape and drive change. Civic officials, traffic police and the local inspector are now just a text away.

Mutiple groups

Today, almost every locality with an active Residents’ Welfare Association has multiple WhatsApp groups, with officials from utility service providers such as the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), water and electricity utilities, and the police, as members. A majority of these groups function actively in upper middle class neighbourhoods such as Whitefield, HSR Layout, Indira Nagar, Koramangala, Shanthi Nagar, Vidyaranyapura and Yelahanka.

Zahid Jawali, who started the HSR Resident’s Watch group in 2014, one of the first such groups in the city, said the platform forced officials to respond to residents for causes such as the Cycle Day, garbage segregation, and the ban on plastic. “The moment a senior official responds on the group, lower level officials fall in line,” he said. But he stressed on the need for constant communication with officials.

Many successful groups have taken up citywide issues. Bengaluru Eco Team brings together volunteers and officials involved in waste management. Every morning, the group monitors garbage collection and transportation. Local officials are often pulled up if they have been lax. One such WhatsApp group that is considered successful monitors the generation of additional waste during festivals with each ward’s volunteers and officials reporting live on the group.

‘Best weapon’

N.S. Ramakanth, a waste management expert, says: “Volunteers take photographs of garbage mounds. Officials are forced to act. The mobile phone in our hands has turned out to be the best weapon to drive civic action,” he said.

It isn’t just tech-savvy citizens. Even the government has jumped on to the bandwagon. Reporting and project monitoring are done via groups comprising officials. The BBMP and the police, for instance, have dedicated WhatsApp groups to each division, and commissioners are on board — allowing direct monitoring and lateral hierarchy in the redress of governance issues.

A big success is ‘Be Ready Bengaluru,’ a group run by the State Disaster Monitoring Cell with multi-agency heads, which became a virtual control room during the July floods. “We provided alerts on the rainfall and floods, which helped multiple agencies in their response,” said N. Manjunath Prasad, Commissioner, BBMP.

However, a platform that allows citizens to air their views unfiltered comes with its own set of problems. For those running the groups, there is a constant battle to keep out political bickering, abuse and forwards, which dilute the cause of the group. For officials, the ceaseless alerts can take a toll on their family life. “There is a drastic increase in work pressure as these messages come in even after our office timings, causing friction at home,” said an official.

But the BBMP chief makes it a point to tell his officers to be part of as many WhatsApp groups as possible. When citizens complained that a joint commissioner had exited a group, the commissioner gave him an earful, indicating the change in attitudes to civic governance.

Apart from officials, many groups seek to include political representatives. For instance, Praveen Sundaram from residents’ platform ‘I Change Indiranagar’ said they included MLAs and councillors in various groups that ranged from traffic to electricity issues. “It helps to have political representatives since the groups become inclusive, provide funds, and get officials to act,” he said. Not all groups toe this line though.

Digital divide

With RWAs and smartphones still being a middle-class phenomenon, there have been concerns of skewed governance mirroring the digital divide. “Social media and WhatsApp amplify upper middle class voices, making governance over-responsive to one section and under-responsive to other sections.

For instance, a citizen RWA group asked for the removal of street vendors in Yelahanka, to which BBMP officials responded in earnest, but street vendors were never consulted,” said Vinay Sreenivasa of the Alternative Law Forum, a lawyers’ collective.