WhatsApp is changing the way India eats
Anyone who thought WhatsApp’s culinary level didn’t go beyond an aubergine and peach emoji is mistaken. In India, WhatsApp appears to be unleashing a true food revolution.
In a gigantic—and not always easily accessible—country like India, getting information, let alone distributing it, can be quite difficult. Fortunately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put a stop to that three years ago and ensured that even remote areas had good internet access.
The result: India now has more WhatsApp users—more than 200 million, or 1 in 6 Indians—than any other country. And although this has led to the spread of quite a lot of fake news, among cooking enthusiasts it appears to be the medium of choice.
Documenting
The British newspaper Independent investigated why. “One of the problems with recording and sharing Indian recipes is that the people who make them—especially home cooks, farmers and young chefs—are often less highly educated and simply don’t document them. They aren’t used to using a computer or blogging, or people simply don’t ask them to,” explains Mumbai-based journalist Vikram Doctor.
Easy
Because WhatsApp is so simple, anyone can use it. We see that in the Netherlands too: the chances are greater that your parents have WhatsApp than that they’re on Facebook or Instagram (and let’s be honest: if they are, it often doesn’t mean anything good). In India, it’s exactly the same. Aysha Tanya, founder of food website The Goya Journal: “My mother sends me voice memos on WhatsApp, allowing her to share very specific details. Such as: Fry the onions until they’re brown and listen to this sound.”
Entire family chats and group chats with dozens of members are set up to share recipes, send each other photos and even debate what should or shouldn’t go into a dish.
Trade
But it also turns out to be extremely useful for home cooks, traders and farmers: through large WhatsApp groups—“It’s a shame that only 256 people are allowed in one group”—they give each other tips, share their networks and let potential buyers know what delicious things they have on offer.
Yet here too, the annoyance of large WhatsApp groups occasionally rears its head. Because yes, in India too, people share useless GIFs, memes and videos in groups, and yes: some people in India find that incredibly irritating as well.
