WhatsApp crowd gathering tactics worry cops

Chennai: The state government, police department and political parties seem to have learnt their valuable lessons from the jallikattu protest, which was hailed as a leaderless and peaceful agitation, which may, however, have ended in a bloody climax.

Various groups with their own agendas may have tried to steer the protest in different directions, but finally the anti-social elements brought it to a chaotic end.
“See, nobody is happy at the end even though jallikattu has become a reality.

Nobody left the venue with peace of mind. Even those who fought only for jallikattu are not in a position to celebrate their victory because of the bloody end it had,” it was pointed out.

Government officials acknowledge that this was the first ever successful agitation mobilised using social networking sites and WhatsApp groups. A police official accepted the fact that the police had never expected it to be such a big success. “The fact that anybody can mobilise people this way is a certainly worrying,” the officer added.

On the first day - January 17 - when a few scores of people assembled at Marina, the city police failed to assess the possible turnout in the coming days, because this was the first time agitators using WhatsApp as their tool to mobilise strength. And because of WhatsApp privacy policies, there was no chance for the police to know the volume of traffic on WhatsApp about Jallikattu protest,.

The lack of leadership in the protest had confused the government. The same thing had helped fringe groups to hijack the jallikattu agitation to so many other things. Everybody — from left extremist groups to Tamil nationalists to Tamil Diaspora to Anti-Modi warriors — wanted to cash in on the situation of availability of a huge gathering of youngsters.

“We suspect that the influence and contribution of certain political parties made sure that there was no smooth end to the agitation,” an officer noted.