ipaidabribe.com: A website that encourages Indians to share their bribe giving experiences
Something interesting happened in Mumbai last month. For the first time ever, Harvard Business Schoolstepped out of its Boston campus to bring its leadership and corporate accountability programme for senior corporate executives to India. The programme focuses on promoting socially and financially responsible corporate conduct. In an environment where scams and business scandals are making headlines every day, the turnout for the four-day programme was expectedly impressive.
"Corruption is pervasive and also corrosive," saysKarthik Ramanna, one of the Harvard professors who teaches the course. This isn't just about India. According to a recent study, corruption is the biggest issue of concern for corporate executives in Russia. It is ranked No. 2 by Indians and No. 5 by the Chinese. "Businesses have to learn to deal with corruption as a phenomenon," he says.
For inspiration, Ramanna is nudging these corporate executives to look at some unusual places. Among the case studies taught, one is on ipaidabribe.com, a website that focuses on petty retail corruption in India. It helps the average Indian post his or her bribery experience and it also uncovers the "market price" of corruption in various cities, departments and services.
According to the website, Delhiites, for example, have paid Rs 500-1,000 for police verification for passports. Mumbaikars have paid a petty Rs 20 to as high as Rs 21 lakh as bribes to the police. "Paying a bribe is a very lonely experience. We want to change that," says Swati Ramanathan, co-founder of Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based NGO that is also steering the ipaidabribe.com initiative.
What have these cases of petty bribery got to do with the large cases of corruption — 2G scam and coalgate are pegged at close to Rs 2 lakh crore — that executives encounter in their businesses? Prevalence and acceptability of corruption in India at every level seems cultural. "We wanted to change the compass of conversation. India needs a firestarter," says Ramanna.
Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant
Ipaidabribe.com provides that platform. The website allows Indians to post their bribe experiences under four distinct categories — I Paid a Bribe (captures incidences of bribery), I Am a Bribe Fighter (experiences where people resisted bribery), I Met an Honest Officer (recognising honest officers) and I Do Not Want to Pay a Bribe (educating Indians how to avoid paying a bribe).
While the website does not allow the mention of names, the naming and shaming of government departments has had some success. For example, the transport commissioner in Bangalore used the website's feedback to reform its procedures and minimise bribery cases with a thrust on automation. For example, licences can now be applied online. In a global first, Bangalore now gives automated driving test tracks to applicants to bring down the discretionary powers of its officials.
The largest number of bribe cases (in value) was being reported from the land registration department. Interestingly, the bribe for the same work varied from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2 lakh in Bangalore city, with higher bribes being asked for in new sought-after areas where transactions were larger. Typically, land can only be registered in the area where it is. Four months back, the chief secretary of Karnataka government took a step to curb it by increasing the number of government offices where the registration could be done.
The website's journey has been impressive. It gets 3,000-5,000 hits every day with 1.4 million hits so far. It has 20,000-plus bribe reports filed from 500 Indian cities. Next year it will boost its reach by focusing on the Hindi heartland. It is also launching a mobile application where people can use their phones to file their bribe reports.
The site is getting some global attention — NGOs from 26 countries showed interest in replicating the model. It is doing very well in Greece. A similar site has been created in Pakistan. Inspired, Bhutan's anti-corruption division has created an online form to allow anonymous reporting of corruption.
In 2014, they are also planning to organise a global meet in India on how to use crowdsourcing to stem corruption. Says Santosh N Hegde, former Lokayukta in Karnataka: "This greed over need is going viral. Everybody wants to get rich as quickly as possible. Public acceptance of corruption is very high. Ipaidabribe.com is pushing to change that."
Cultural Connotation
Corruption has strong cultural linkages. In India, relationship-based transactions are common. Political parties compete in doling out favours to certain castes and groups, thus encouraging corruption. They often use public office for private gain without any qualms. Access to all kinds of services, big or small, public or private — from hospitals to police stations, from schools to sporting events — is determined by personal relationships. "This is my friend and he has to be given special treatment is something Indians are used to," says Ramanna.
Culture affects the strain and degree of corruption a country faces. For example, Japan is a very developed country. It scores relatively higher on the transparency index, but institutional corruption is high there and norms for transparency very different. Recently,Olympus, a Japanese firm, faced a major challenge. The company for the first time had hired a non-Japanese CEO who unearthed an accounting scandal and went public with it. He was promptly fired. "Apparently, he embarrassed a lot of people and culturally it was not acceptable," says Ramanna.
Typically, large-scale institutional corruption is more prevalent in repressive, undemocratic regimes like China. While the US is less corrupt, it looks at and defines corruption differently. It has legitimised and formalised political donations by businesses. By making lobbying legitimate, it has also made it transparent.
India, however, is a class apart.
Democratic, Yet Not Quite There
India has everything that should curb, not catalyse, corruption, says Ramanna. Democracy, free press, RTI — all of these push for transparency that should mitigate corruption. But somehow these commonly understood restrains do not work in India.
Why? One, there is a hypothesis that democratic institutions do not work as well in India. "Institutions that push for transparency are not free. Maybe we are fooling ourselves that we have robust institutions," says Ramanna. For example, India ranks 131st in the ranking put out by Reporters Without Borders on press freedom — worse than countries like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cambodia and even Bangladesh. India's ranking, in fact, has been slipping over the past few years.
Similarly, Freedom House puts India in the "partly free" category in the 2012 internet freedom rankings — below countries like Argentina and Ukraine. The ranking is hardly unfair. Need proof? Just look at the arrests of two girls for their Facebook posts.
Two, it is also true that access to many democratic institutions in India is not equally and universally available to all its citizens in reality. For example, many victims of corruption do not have real access to courts and police. Either they are so scared of these institutions that they do not approach them or even if they do they are not given a good, impartial hearing. Not surprisingly, people in rural areas have less success with RTI than those in the more informed urban areas.
Thus, despite all the democratic pillars, corruption rages in India. "In fact, because of this we have become immune to it as a society. And corruption here takes a far more virulent form," says Ramanna.
Crowdsourcing Against Corruption
Initiatives like ipaidabribe.com are triggering a welcome shift. "It shows how collective action can combat corruption at lower levels. Corporates too must work collectively to fight it," says Ramanna.
Technology is helping in a big way. Internet's reach, scaleability, anonymity and its crowdsourcing ability can be enormously powerful. This is what Julian Assange's WikiLeaks tapped into. This is what the Russian website RosPil, which means to saw off in Russian, is doing. It is also one of the Harvard case studies, besides ipaidabribe.com.
Founded in 2007 by young Moscow lawyer Alexei Navalny, RosPil is fighting to combat corruption through media exposure and legal prosecution. RosPil employs a small number of lawyers full time and is financed by voluntary donation and relies heavily on crowdsourcing to report, vet and expose corruption in Russia. This means most of the heavy lifting is being done by 30,000 anonymous volunteers. It claims to have prevented $1.2 billion worth of corrupt contracts in Russia.
"The entire initiative is so decentralised that the state machinery will find it very difficult to shut it down," says Ramanna.
Source : MALINI GOYAL,ET BUREAU
According to the website, Delhiites, for example, have paid Rs 500-1,000 for police verification for passports. Mumbaikars have paid a petty Rs 20 to as high as Rs 21 lakh as bribes to the police.
"Corruption is pervasive and also corrosive," saysKarthik Ramanna, one of the Harvard professors who teaches the course. This isn't just about India. According to a recent study, corruption is the biggest issue of concern for corporate executives in Russia. It is ranked No. 2 by Indians and No. 5 by the Chinese. "Businesses have to learn to deal with corruption as a phenomenon," he says.
For inspiration, Ramanna is nudging these corporate executives to look at some unusual places. Among the case studies taught, one is on ipaidabribe.com, a website that focuses on petty retail corruption in India. It helps the average Indian post his or her bribery experience and it also uncovers the "market price" of corruption in various cities, departments and services.
According to the website, Delhiites, for example, have paid Rs 500-1,000 for police verification for passports. Mumbaikars have paid a petty Rs 20 to as high as Rs 21 lakh as bribes to the police. "Paying a bribe is a very lonely experience. We want to change that," says Swati Ramanathan, co-founder of Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based NGO that is also steering the ipaidabribe.com initiative.
What have these cases of petty bribery got to do with the large cases of corruption — 2G scam and coalgate are pegged at close to Rs 2 lakh crore — that executives encounter in their businesses? Prevalence and acceptability of corruption in India at every level seems cultural. "We wanted to change the compass of conversation. India needs a firestarter," says Ramanna.
Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant
Ipaidabribe.com provides that platform. The website allows Indians to post their bribe experiences under four distinct categories — I Paid a Bribe (captures incidences of bribery), I Am a Bribe Fighter (experiences where people resisted bribery), I Met an Honest Officer (recognising honest officers) and I Do Not Want to Pay a Bribe (educating Indians how to avoid paying a bribe).
While the website does not allow the mention of names, the naming and shaming of government departments has had some success. For example, the transport commissioner in Bangalore used the website's feedback to reform its procedures and minimise bribery cases with a thrust on automation. For example, licences can now be applied online. In a global first, Bangalore now gives automated driving test tracks to applicants to bring down the discretionary powers of its officials.
The largest number of bribe cases (in value) was being reported from the land registration department. Interestingly, the bribe for the same work varied from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2 lakh in Bangalore city, with higher bribes being asked for in new sought-after areas where transactions were larger. Typically, land can only be registered in the area where it is. Four months back, the chief secretary of Karnataka government took a step to curb it by increasing the number of government offices where the registration could be done.
The website's journey has been impressive. It gets 3,000-5,000 hits every day with 1.4 million hits so far. It has 20,000-plus bribe reports filed from 500 Indian cities. Next year it will boost its reach by focusing on the Hindi heartland. It is also launching a mobile application where people can use their phones to file their bribe reports.
The site is getting some global attention — NGOs from 26 countries showed interest in replicating the model. It is doing very well in Greece. A similar site has been created in Pakistan. Inspired, Bhutan's anti-corruption division has created an online form to allow anonymous reporting of corruption.
In 2014, they are also planning to organise a global meet in India on how to use crowdsourcing to stem corruption. Says Santosh N Hegde, former Lokayukta in Karnataka: "This greed over need is going viral. Everybody wants to get rich as quickly as possible. Public acceptance of corruption is very high. Ipaidabribe.com is pushing to change that."
Cultural Connotation
Corruption has strong cultural linkages. In India, relationship-based transactions are common. Political parties compete in doling out favours to certain castes and groups, thus encouraging corruption. They often use public office for private gain without any qualms. Access to all kinds of services, big or small, public or private — from hospitals to police stations, from schools to sporting events — is determined by personal relationships. "This is my friend and he has to be given special treatment is something Indians are used to," says Ramanna.
Culture affects the strain and degree of corruption a country faces. For example, Japan is a very developed country. It scores relatively higher on the transparency index, but institutional corruption is high there and norms for transparency very different. Recently,Olympus, a Japanese firm, faced a major challenge. The company for the first time had hired a non-Japanese CEO who unearthed an accounting scandal and went public with it. He was promptly fired. "Apparently, he embarrassed a lot of people and culturally it was not acceptable," says Ramanna.Typically, large-scale institutional corruption is more prevalent in repressive, undemocratic regimes like China. While the US is less corrupt, it looks at and defines corruption differently. It has legitimised and formalised political donations by businesses. By making lobbying legitimate, it has also made it transparent.
India, however, is a class apart.
Democratic, Yet Not Quite There
India has everything that should curb, not catalyse, corruption, says Ramanna. Democracy, free press, RTI — all of these push for transparency that should mitigate corruption. But somehow these commonly understood restrains do not work in India.
Why? One, there is a hypothesis that democratic institutions do not work as well in India. "Institutions that push for transparency are not free. Maybe we are fooling ourselves that we have robust institutions," says Ramanna. For example, India ranks 131st in the ranking put out by Reporters Without Borders on press freedom — worse than countries like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cambodia and even Bangladesh. India's ranking, in fact, has been slipping over the past few years.
Similarly, Freedom House puts India in the "partly free" category in the 2012 internet freedom rankings — below countries like Argentina and Ukraine. The ranking is hardly unfair. Need proof? Just look at the arrests of two girls for their Facebook posts.
Two, it is also true that access to many democratic institutions in India is not equally and universally available to all its citizens in reality. For example, many victims of corruption do not have real access to courts and police. Either they are so scared of these institutions that they do not approach them or even if they do they are not given a good, impartial hearing. Not surprisingly, people in rural areas have less success with RTI than those in the more informed urban areas.
Thus, despite all the democratic pillars, corruption rages in India. "In fact, because of this we have become immune to it as a society. And corruption here takes a far more virulent form," says Ramanna.
Crowdsourcing Against Corruption
Initiatives like ipaidabribe.com are triggering a welcome shift. "It shows how collective action can combat corruption at lower levels. Corporates too must work collectively to fight it," says Ramanna.
Technology is helping in a big way. Internet's reach, scaleability, anonymity and its crowdsourcing ability can be enormously powerful. This is what Julian Assange's WikiLeaks tapped into. This is what the Russian website RosPil, which means to saw off in Russian, is doing. It is also one of the Harvard case studies, besides ipaidabribe.com.
Founded in 2007 by young Moscow lawyer Alexei Navalny, RosPil is fighting to combat corruption through media exposure and legal prosecution. RosPil employs a small number of lawyers full time and is financed by voluntary donation and relies heavily on crowdsourcing to report, vet and expose corruption in Russia. This means most of the heavy lifting is being done by 30,000 anonymous volunteers. It claims to have prevented $1.2 billion worth of corrupt contracts in Russia.
"The entire initiative is so decentralised that the state machinery will find it very difficult to shut it down," says Ramanna.
Source : MALINI GOYAL,ET BUREAU
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