Chapter 4: Samaj Community

• Wall brick icon (left): opens your personal wall and shows a count for new activity.
• Your Samaj name (centre): your village, or a combined name if your village is connected with others. Tap it to open Village Connection (see 4.10).
• Megaphone: your voice status and voice messages left for you.
• Magnifier: Samaj Search (see 4.4).
• Toolbox icon: opens the Toolbox.
• Three-dot menu: Profile, App Theme, Notification Sound, Language, Blocked Users, Reminders, Home screen icons and Logout. Admins also see Manage Admins.

• Family Tree, with a badge for family notifications.
• Matrimony, with a badge for new interests.
• Gallery, with a badge for new photos. Admins also see posts waiting for approval.
• Camera: takes a photo or video and drops it as a pin for your Samaj.
• Radar, with a green number for pins near you. Long-press it to set the radius.
• Business bag: opens your business. It turns green once your business has a name and one product with a photo and price.

Your membership is Pending, Needs verification or Rejected (see 1.5). They unlock once you are approved.

The Mitra star button opens Mitra (Relation Analysis and your Thread Diary, see Chapter 15), and Trip opens the Trip Planner. They hide while you have a chat open.

It is your list of Samaj members. Tap a member to open a private chat with them inside your Samaj. The chat works like any other private chat (see the Chat chapter for photos, voice messages, reminders and more).

The member with the latest activity is on top, such as a new message or a new item from them.

Tap the member. If you have not chatted before, you see an empty chat. Type your message and send.

Unread messages from that member. Opening the chat clears it.

Yes. Long-press the member.

• Clear chat for me removes the chat from your list only.
• Clear chat for both permanently deletes the chat for both of you. The member is not removed from your Samaj.

You blocked that member or they blocked you. You cannot open their chat, wall or business (see 3.6).

You can chat with your contacts and groups. The Samaj member list stays locked until you are approved.

Chats are encrypted (see the Chat chapter).

Approved members of your Samaj group. If your village is connected with other villages, members of those villages are included. People who were once connected but later separated show "No Longer Connected".

• Megaphone: that member's voice status.
• Mitra: open Relation Analysis for your chat with that member (see 17.1).
• Wall: view their personal wall.
• Tree: view their family tree.
• Radar pin: view their memories. It highlights when they have new ones.
• Business bag: view their business. It looks inactive when they have none ("No Business Yet").

That is your own tile. Your own voice status opens from it.

You see "[Name] has no memories yet".

New members waiting for approval appear at the top for village admins, with Approve and Reject buttons. Everyone else sees only approved members.

Rejecting needs two different admins (see 4.8).

Tap the magnifier at the top of the Samaj tab. Samaj Search opens with two tabs, Members and Pehchan.

Type a name or part of a name. It searches your Samaj members. It also finds names written in another script, so you can search in English for a name written in Gujarati or Hindi. If nothing matches you see "No results for [text]".

Yes. The Chats tab searches messages in your Samaj chats and shows the member and time.

You have not joined a Samaj yet. Join one from the Samaj tab (see 1.4).

Your Samaj has no approved members yet, or your search did not match anyone.

Use the Pehchan tab for phone numbers (see 4.5).

Pehchan shows how you are connected to someone through people you both know. Type their mobile number and it finds the shortest chain of connections.

1. Open Samaj Search and tap the Pehchan tab.
2. Tap Sync once so KuhuChat can use your contacts. The message "Sync your network for social proof." explains this. You see "Samaj Network Synced!" when done.
3. Enter the person's mobile number.
4. Read the result.

• Direct: you know each other.
• 1°, 2° or 3° Contact: connected through your phone contacts, with the names of the people in between.
• 1°, 2° or 3° Samaj Connection: connected through your Samaj and families.
• No direct path found, but you share the same Samaj: no chain was found, but both of you belong to the same Samaj.
• No connection within 3 degrees: nobody links you within three steps.
• This is your number: you typed your own number.
• Connection error: try again.

KuhuChat uses only scrambled (hashed) versions of phone numbers for matching. Your contact names are not shown to others.

Sync is needed to find contact-based connections. Without it you may still see Samaj-based results.

So you can recognise the person you searched for.

An admin is a trusted member who approves new members and posts for the village. Each village has up to 3 admins.

• Automatically if they are among the first two members of a village, or if the village has no admin.
• Later, through admin applications and votes (see 4.7).

• Review pending members (4.8).
• Review pending gallery posts (4.9).
• Manage admins (4.7).

On the Samaj tab, tap the three dots and choose Manage Admins. Only admins see this option.

• Current Admins, with Remove and Keep buttons for each other admin.
• Applicants for Admin, with supporter counts and Support buttons.

Tap Apply on the Applicants section. You see "Applied! Members can now vote for you." You can cancel with Cancel Application. Your support votes are cleared.

• You are already an admin for this village.
• You have already applied.
• Application withdrawn.

By votes. Each voter taps Remove or Keep on an admin. The result is the number of Remove votes minus Keep votes.

10 percent of the village's members, and never fewer than 2. For example 10 members need 2, 100 members need 10, 200 members need 20. The screen shows "[n] net votes needed to remove" and the member count.

Not below 10 members. You see "Removal disabled — village needs 10+ members".

Yes. Voting the same choice again withdraws your vote. Voting the other choice switches it. You cannot vote on yourself.

The applicant with the most supporters. If supporters are equal, the one who applied earlier wins. The new admin starts with a clean vote count.

It adds your support to an applicant. Tap Supporting to withdraw it.

Counts are shown. Individual votes are not listed.

On the Pending Members screen, and at the top of the Samaj members list. Each request shows the person's name, village and how long ago they joined ("Joined 2h ago"). The screen says "New member — pending review".

• Verify Member: approves the person straight away. You see "Member verified successfully".
• Ask to Verify: asks the person to confirm their identity. You see "Member asked to verify their identity".
• Reject: counts as one reject vote. You see "Reject vote recorded (1/2). One more admin needs to reject."

Two different admins. After the second vote you see "Member request rejected."

You see "You already voted to reject this member."

You see "This request was already resolved by another admin."

You see "No pending members. All members are verified."

Their status changes to Permanent, Needs verification or Rejected (see 1.5). When verification is requested, the admins' names and phone numbers are listed so they can call.

Posts that members add to the Samaj Gallery wait for admin review before everyone sees them (see the Gallery chapter).

Open the Pending Posts screen. Each post shows the member, the media (photo, video, audio or document), when it was posted, and "Auto-publishes in" a countdown.

• Approve: you see "Post approved and published to gallery".
• Reject: asks "This will permanently remove the post. Are you sure?" then "Post rejected and removed".

After 1 hour the post is published automatically.

You see "No pending posts. All posts have been reviewed."

Yes. The admin badge on the Gallery icon goes down once a post is approved, rejected or published automatically.

It lets your village group connect with other villages of the same caste, so members of both groups share one Samaj group. Each group is a subcaste of a village, for example one subcaste in one village.

Tap your Samaj name at the top of the Samaj tab.

• Your Village and your Current Cluster of connected villages.
• Find a Group, to search for another group.
• Pending Requests, with a Vote button.
• Separation Votes.
• A "How it works" note: select your village, another village sends a merge request, both villages vote to merge.

1. Tap Find a Group.
2. Choose State, District, Taluka and Village.
3. Choose the group. You see "Selected: [caste] of [village]".
4. Tap Send request to this group.

You see "Request sent. Both groups need 10 votes."

10 votes from each group. When both reach 10 they connect automatically. There is no separate accept step.

Open Pending Requests, check "Requested by [name]" and tap Vote. You can only vote for your own group. Other groups show "Not your group".

You cannot send a request to your own village ("This is your own village!"). A village with no members shows "This village has no members yet." A profile without a caste shows "Caste profile incomplete".

Tap Vote to Leave Cluster, choose the specific village you want to disconnect from, and confirm. You see "Your vote to separate has been cast." Disconnecting from one village does not affect your other connections.

15 votes from your own group. The other group cannot block it.

Yes, with a new request and the same 10 votes from each group.

Your Samaj name shows the combined group, and members, chats and the gallery include the connected villages.

The result is counted by KuhuChat's server, not by your phone, so it cannot be changed from the app.