Every morning begins in the same way. We open our WhatsApp groups to check the organic vegetable vendor’s latest list of fresh vegetables, then slip into the Seafood Store chat group to browse what the fresh catch of the day is. Meanwhile, we’re scrolling through the neighborhood group to see if anyone has commented on whether that new coffee shop is worth a visit, and asking the repairs group whether anyone knows a good plumber who can stop by urgently to fix a kitchen leak.
That the WhatsApp group has infiltrated every part of Indian middle class life is indisputable. Everyone from the fruit vendor to the deli down the road to office colleagues to civic affairs officials to dodgy political parties have taken up residence there. Not a day goes by when at least one group isn’t consulted for something.
But perhaps the biggest example of how influential the WhatsApp group has become was a Mumbai court case in 2026. The city’s High Court settled a question that would have sounded absurd even ten years ago: can you lose your job for starting a group chat? A professor at a Mumbai social-sciences institute had been asked to retire after he created what his administrators called a parallel WhatsApp group. The court quashed the order, holding that forming such a group without the employer’s permission is no grounds for removing someone from service.
That a dispute over a group chat reached a high court says something about how much weight this little green and white sphere now carries. In India, a WhatsApp group is not a feature. It is infrastructure, it is an emergency alert system, the town crier, the shopping mall; in short, it is the diary of our days.
It’s easy to see how we got here. The app is completely free, needs only an internet connection, and has an easy, intuitive interface that both kids and the elderly, rural and urban communities can easily pick up. The app itself has at least 200 million users in India, in spite of occasional clangour about security lapses. Besides, smartphone ownership climbed steeply, and over nine in ten of those phones come with the app pre-installed.
And although the app was already a mainstay in the country, the pandemic ratcheted its use up by several levels. Each apartment building and society had its own group, vendors began sending out weekly alerts when they sent out their food trucks, and home chefs began their fledgling businesses in the same way, forking out brownies and bisibelebaath with equal vim.
The WhatsApp group does have some murky affiliations, and is known for being manipulated by political parties for misinformation and hoaxes. Yet its everyday use transcends that.
Store owners have used it to build community and trust amongst their customers. Homemakers are encouraged by its ease of use to start fledgling catering businesses from the comfort of their own kitchens. Animal welfare groups have their own chats, reaching out for help whenever they need fosters or financial assistance or even just someone to keep an eye out for someone’s escaped doggy. Schools connect with parents through it. And during Covid, the group was a lifesaver. Literally. People desperate for oxygen cylinders or out of stock medicine reached out to others on the chat, who helped them the best way they could.
WhatsApp has also become an archive. Indian culinary knowledge has long been spoken rather than written, and for an older generation unaccustomed to jotting every detail down in books, the family group becomes an easy way to share.
None of this comes without a negative side. Hoax health remedies circulate in health groups whose gullible members treat them as credible. Daily good-morning greetings, jokes, and videos annoy busy but inundated users. Photos and videos gobble phone storage, so some members quit groups when their devices fill up, while others buy new phones just to stay in. Organizers chafe at size caps when demand is enormous, and some find unsolicited sales pitches pushed on to them far more intrusive than a post on Instagram.
Which brings us back to the professor. His crime, in the eyes of his employer, was gathering people without asking. But gathering is what Indians have always done, at wells, tea stalls, temple steps, and panchayat meetings, and the group chat is simply the newest place to do it.
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