A democratic model in a tea cup

Thiruvananthapuram: If the Facebook group ‘Eat at Trivandrum’ were to contest Thiruvananthapuram Corporation elections, it would garner 10 percent of the vote share. For, in a day or so, the group will have 1 lakh members in and from Thiruvananthapuram, a city with around 10 lakh people.

But should anyone call the group a tiny democratic institution, they would be referring to more than just the numbers. This is a group which has been able to straighten out eatouts in the city, as it makes the restaurant owners accountable. They do this by tagging restaurant owners to reviews published by members. If it is a negative feedback, restaurant owners offer to explain and make changes. 

It could be treated as a model of democratic devolution, a mini government of sorts, of, for and by the people.

Former bureaucrat R Mohan says, “There is this concept of voluntary public action compelling governments to change. For example, Arab Spring used social media to put pressure on the government. However this is different. It is a model that can be replicated to make government agencies accountable.”

The change was apparent in the service offered at city restaurants. At some of the new eatouts, owners were seen serving food, as they didn’t want a sore review about delay. A city restaurant owner, who had to face a barrage of negative reviews, published a thank you note, with a list of changes he made at his restaurant.

The group also served as a forum for new ventures to be popular. Home chefs launched their beef pickle jars and home-made ‘oonu’ packets on the group. Some tested potential markets in the group, asking what the people would like to have.

Arvind Soju, who started the group, says that it was after he added three moderators that their growth accelerated. He picked Anjana Gopakumar, Vinay Sivadass and Aslam Kunjumoosa from the group to be moderators. Around the same time, the food scene in Thiruvananthapuram was changing. 

More owners had started exploring the potential of hangouts, rather than lunch places. Restaurants sprouted as if the city was badly hungry. In just a year’s time, a half-kilometre stretch along Kuravankonam had at least five new places. The group could have been a major factor which effected this change.

A case in point: when someone in the group suggested that fried ice cream should not come in just vanilla flavour, a leading restaurant added more fried ice creams to their menu, the same week.

However, not all impact the group had has been positive. Arvind Soju says, “To be honest, the people’s power that the group has, can have both positive and negative fallouts. A restaurant owner told us that their business is still suffering from a review posted months ago. It can both make and break a restaurateur’s dream. So we insist that, even if it is a negative feedback, it is constructive.” 

Moreover, five star restaurants don’t seem to be affected by the group. Food reviewer Anil Philip says that these high-end restaurants might not be getting their customers from the group. “Moreover expectations from the sort of restaurants are high. This puts pressure on them to offer better services,” he says.

The group admin launched a set of rules asking members to refrain from unmindful thrashing. They started screening the posts, as there were complaints about fake reviews. When they would delete a particularly pungent post, they would contact the reviewer and the restaurant owner to sort it out among themselves.

Now, should this model be replicated anywhere else, its success hinges on how neutral the admin is. Anyone with an ulterior motive can exploit people, says political science expert J Prabhash.

“Someone who starts a Facebook group can appear to be benign. Once they win over people, and achieve credibility, they can actually manipulate members, especially when they are not a politicized community,” he says.

He cites the example of Voter Megaphone, a campaign which Face book launched encouraging people to vote. However, should the proprietors of Facebook want people to not vote for a candidate, they can pull strings in that direction. 

In fact, there are allegations of Facebook deciding not to nudge a set of randomly chosen people for a study, though they had not announced it. Reports say that the turnout was affected by this decision.

Arvind, however, assures that no one needs to worry about the group being manipulative. “We accept only people in or from Thiruvananthapuram. If we merely wanted to build a base, we could have made this a global group,” he says.