In his first Nowruz message, the Leader pointed to a number of important issues and themes that merit serious attention. Among them was a reference to a concrete experience which, despite being personal and seemingly minor, can play a significant—indeed decisive—role in shaping the country’s development planning system. Ayatollah Khamenei referred to his experience of taking a taxi ride, being present anonymously among passengers, and directly hearing people’s critical remarks. Such a presence, he noted, can serve as a basis for formulating an “effective and expert-informed remedial prescription.”
Naturally, the channels through which public opinion can be gathered are diverse. However, direct, on-the-ground, and anonymous engagement with the public—and listening to their views, at times sharp and even unconventional—creates an immediate and impactful understanding of public sentiment. By the same token, it can significantly influence both the substance and the approach of planning aimed at addressing societal challenges. In this regard, several points warrant attention.
Hearing the Voice of the People and Its Means
Development planning is the cornerstone of progress and advancement in any society. It is the roadmap that charts the course from the present condition toward a desirable future—one in which welfare, justice, and prosperity are secured for all citizens. Yet history shows that many development plans, despite good intentions and allocated resources, have faced serious challenges in practice and have failed to achieve their stated objectives. The root cause of many of these shortcomings lies in a deep and fundamental gap: the divide between the perspectives and analyses of elites, experts, and policymakers on the one hand, and the lived realities, needs, concerns, and priorities of ordinary people on the other.
Development planning systems reach their highest level of effectiveness and concreteness when they are able to hear the authentic voice of the people—not merely through official and filtered channels, but directly, candidly, and without mediation. In this context, anonymous, on-the-ground presence in public spaces—such as parks, urban transportation networks (subways and taxis), and everyday marketplaces—emerges as an innovative and essential strategy for achieving a deeper understanding of these realities. This approach serves as a powerful tool for injecting “objectivity” and “realism” into the fabric of development planning.
Over the decades, development planning systems have relied on various methods to identify public needs and perspectives. Official surveys, advisory committees and councils, public meetings (often attended by a limited and experienced cohort), and reliance on statistical and field reports are among these tools. While valuable in their own right, these methods face significant limitations in practice that can undermine their effectiveness in presenting a true and comprehensive picture of public demands. These limitations include biases in data collection, the filtering of information, lack of genuine representation, and the risk of “information bubbles.” Such constraints can steer development planning onto a path that diverges from real needs, potentially resulting not in the resolution of people’s problems, but in the creation of ineffective solutions—or even the exacerbation of existing issues.
Power of Anonymous Observation
The public sphere is a full mirror of society—a space where diverse social, economic, and cultural layers intersect, and where the real needs, concerns, and priorities of people reveal themselves spontaneously and without concealment. Anonymous and observant presence in such environments provides the planning system with a treasure trove of first-hand information that cannot be obtained through any other mechanism.
Public spaces—including parks, shopping centers, public transportation systems such as subways and taxis, stadiums, banks, healthcare centers, and hospitals—are among the most suitable repositories for hearing the unmediated voice of the people. The types of information accessible in these settings include real needs, concerns and anxieties, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, as well as lived culture and behavioral patterns across different social strata.
When the observer (whether an official, expert, or planner) is present in these spaces anonymously and without revealing their formal identity, the “observer effect” is diminished. People tend to alter their behavior in the presence of someone with an official identity or a clearly defined data-gathering purpose. In contrast, in the presence of an ordinary individual without any apparent agenda, people remain themselves within their natural context. This spontaneity leads to feedback that is far closer to reality. Such field observations not only reveal new problems, but also challenge the assumptions held by planners about societal needs, paving the way for correction and reassessment.
That said, translating this highly important and impactful idea into a sustainable operational mechanism requires careful application and intelligent execution. Presence in the public sphere must be purposeful, systematic, and ultimately analyzable. Forming mobile and well-trained teams, designing protocols for observation and data recording, diversifying the fields under study, and employing qualitative techniques such as non-intrusive observation can help sustain this approach. Technology can also play a complementary and facilitating role in strengthening this method, but it should not replace the human element and field observation.
For the development planning system to be genuinely “development-oriented,” rather than merely “plan-oriented,” it must construct a bridge between macro-level analysis and the lived realities of the people. Anonymous presence in the public sphere—parks, subways, markets, and other everyday settings—is one of the most powerful and reality-grounding tools for building this bridge. By enabling the direct and unmediated hearing of people’s voices, this approach breathes “life” into plans, moving them away from abstraction and toward realism.
Adopting and institutionalizing this strategy requires a shift in perspective and a willingness within the governance system to receive information from unconventional channels. This constitutes a necessary step toward enhancing the quality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of development plans—and ultimately toward achieving a society in which development regains its true meaning and is placed in the service of the people.