

Fight against Corruption in India using technology - ishanagr
http://corruptiontrak.com/

======
govind201
Here are my two cents on why we started CorruptionTrak.

Corruption seems like an insurmountable problem because it is sociological in
nature; it’s difficult for the common man to envision social change because it
doesn't happen instantaneously. But here’s how social change can and has been
engendered:

1) Fear of Censure - Corruption flourishes, at least in India, because people
aren't worried about being caught. You can, as one user of our service put it
"show [your] dirty pan-chewed teeth and shamelessly put [your] hand forth for
bakhsheesh" (baksheesh = bribe) and not have a worry in the world because your
act has no chance of being traced. I speak here, of course, of petty or day-
to-day corruption.

Note that I don’t imply “fear” in “big brother” terms. I speak of the fear
required to maintain law and order. This works in the same way that the fear
of a policeman pulling you over or a radar camera catching you in the act
makes you keep to road rules at all times. Here’s where we think technology
has a vital role to play.

It’s difficult to have an honest policeman stationed at every street corner
for obvious reasons, hence, through increasingly ubiquitous technology, we are
hoping to tap into the honesty of the common man. By giving everybody the
ability to make such transactions traceable, we are hoping to instill this
element of fear of being traced. If the idea of citizen policing takes off,
then we hope the fear of watchful eyes will make people think twice before
demanding a bribe, if at all.

Of course, gathering this data is only one albeit essential step. Fear will
truly come into play if people are actually caught. To facilitate this, we
have several plans, including those that involve the media (sting operations
etc) and the law (political allegiances aside, we eagerly await some of the
provisions of the Jan Lokpal proposals, some of which institute official
bodies that we hope to channel such data to).

2) Shame – Corruption, although often blatant, is still frowned upon by most
sections of society. Nobody wants to be identified as being “corrupt”. The
possibility of being shamed can be a massive deterrent. While this idea of an
entire society being consumed by fear of a website seems a bit presumptuous at
first, we think that this can be done by targeting constituent fragments of
society. If you belong to a specific community, say a group of salesmen, which
abides by this service religiously, you might not pay a bribe to the peon to
get ahead in line at the next customer office you visit for fear of being
shamed in front of your peer group. After all, the members of your group could
at any time access this service and learn of your corrupt ways; even if the
occurrence of such practices was previously left unsaid, the uneasy calm is
likely to be shaken through validation from an external source such as this.

We have spent several months pondering the right ecosystem to realize the
above goals. For instance, the above method of “being shamed by your peer
group” could just as easily be used by a jealous member to slander someone
else. Hence, we’re looking to leave specific names out of our system and
rather, target this evil by location and by nature of crime, to shift the
burden of self-governance (due to collective shame) to small fragments of
society.

We are looking to strike the right balance of the various factors in play,
hence this initial post on HN – our prior experiences have shown this to be
the ideal ground for gaining good feedback and suggestions. If you have your
own vision on how this idea should be molded, feel free to post here or
contact us at admin@corruptiontrak.com , no matter what your country of origin
or professional background.

------
microarchitect
How do you expect this site to be used? Is this an attempt to list all the
places where one has to bribe to get stuff done? Sadly, everybody knows the
answer to that, it's everywhere. Is it an attempt show corruption is all-
pervasive in India? The answer to that is also obvious.

My question is this: let's say everyone with access to the internet used your
site and reported all the bribes they paid, how will this help change the
situation?

~~~
aufreak3
I wonder whether the anti-thesis of such sites might be more effective than
these "complain away" ones. By that, I mean sites where people can post
_appreciative_ notes about job well done by particular government staff. If
the ratings there then translate into something tangible for the staff, then
they may be incentivized to do well.

~~~
govind201
Interesting. An informal channel for customer feedback, you mean? A review
site without the emphasis on the negativity of the acts? Hmm.

------
dman
The last time something like this was tried in India, people just used it as a
guide to find out who needs to be bribed for what purpose.

~~~
govind201
I'm curious - which effort are you referring to?

~~~
dman
<http://www.economist.com/node/15393714> \- check towards the end of the
article.

------
yummyfajitas
It's a good effort, but unfortunately it won't address the real reason
corruption persists. Corruption is socially acceptable.

Here is an American perspective on corruption: none of my friends or family
are corrupt. This statement is tautological - if they were corrupt, they would
cease to be my friends or family.

Corruption will persist until India takes the same attitude.

Creating an anti-corruption website is great. But you'll probably do more good
if you publicly disown your corrupt relatives.

~~~
solutionyogi
Background: I am Indian, lived there till I was 24. Moved to USA since last 6
years.

I kind of agree. It is not that corruption is socially acceptable, the problem
is that common man has no choice. E.g. Until recently, Section 377 of Indian
Penal Code could be used against you if you are gay. In Mumbai, there has been
many cases where cops have pretended to be gay in public bathroom and try to
harass other gay folks. Now if you are caught, you have two choices: either go
to Jail or bribe the police officer. Guess what choice you are going to make?

Another example: Four Seasons needed 165 government permits to open their
hotel in Mumbai, including a permit to use a vegetable weighing scale in
kitchen. [Ref: <http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/07mumbai.htm>] Now, Four
Seasons may have gone and obtained all the proper permits but if there is a
business man in India who doesn't have deep pockets to wait around till all
the permits come through, he has no choice but to bribe the government
official and focus on the business.

Finally, my own personal story: when I was applying for my green card, I
needed to get transcripts from my university because I misplaced the original
ones which I had. The clerk at University said it would take a month. It was
clear to me that he wanted me to bribe him to speed up the process. Once
again, I can stand up to the principle and wait for a month to get my
transcript. [And I am sure he would give another excuse to delay giving me the
transcript]. As my immigration was important to me, I bribed him and got the
transcript the next day. [And I can't complain about him at the University
because he did not directly ask me for money.]

There are lots of honest people in India and no one wants to bribe but there
is no recourse for them if they don't bribe [law enforcement is a big
problem.]

I read govind201's goal with this site and I applaud the effort (anything we
can do to fight corruption must be done), I think we need a more radical
approach to solve this very difficult problem. Something like a 'Lokpal Bill'
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill>] but not before removing the
critical flaws present in the bill. Also, working on to reduce government
regulation will go a long way towards reducing corruption.

~~~
govind201
I identify with what you're saying. I've been in such situations too and I've
hoped for more practical alternatives to paying a bribe. I have my fingers
crossed for a good Lokpal bill myself. Rise of the middle class is
increasingly playing a role too.

That said, I don't think one single approach is going to solve this problem.
Nor is it fair to label this as a homogeneous problem. There are many forms of
corruption and I do believe that CorruptionTrak is relevant to a significant
number of them.

------
dr_
For the site, I would advise you use a larger, bolder font, to make the
charges seem more glaring. There also needs to be additional information, such
as the name of the officer involved. Corruption in India is so widespread that
it's become a lifestyle - it's simply understood that you will have to pay to
get certain things done. But that doesn't mean it cannot change, I believe
there are people in the government who really want to crack down, and I
applaud efforts like this.

~~~
govind201
Point taken. We have experimented with fields such as "offender's name" and
"offender's department" on the mobile app. We have been pondering the privacy
aspect as well, so as to keep the posts genuine and noble-minded.

------
namank
This is interesting.

I'm afraid that this might turn into an outlet for people to bribe and be ok
with it because they posted the experience here. By posting it, they may
inadvertently be satisfied that they have 'done something about it' which is
not true...

On the other hand, if some local organization can use this to come up to
actually do something about it, then we're talking.

Suppose time will tell...do the people behind the site have a vision in mind?

------
vbcr1111
One of the incident which is reported is: "paid bribe to get away with drunk
driving." <http://corruptiontrak.com/dev/reports/view/48>

Honestly, i do not think any amount of technology or legislation would be able
to fix corruption, unless it is sought at a different angle. Problem here does
not exist with bureaucracy, but with the people.

~~~
vbcr1111
Another one: "The police arrived at a party I was having at my house after
they got a complaint about the noise and we paid them off to not file a case
and let us continue the party. "

------
kodeninja
I think RTI has helped to some extent in easing the troubles of the common
man. I have personally witnessed and experienced its effect in many cases.
Right from the "I got my passport/PF etc., that was pending for 6 months, in 2
weeks after filing an RTI" to bigger issues like getting public infrastructure
improved (e.g. roads created/repaired), RTI has had a positive impact overall.
Of course, it's not clear if any action is taken against the officials in
question, but this is a tremendously helpful first step and a possible
deterrent to blatant and uncontrolled corruption.

------
jaipilot747
Great site. Not that I think any less of this, but in the longer run it'd have
to do a bit more than data-collection.

Also, it will need translations into local languages and a volunteer base to
verify claims etc. when it grows to be popular. Any thoughts on those lines?

~~~
govind201
Ubiquity in terms of platform and languages was one consideration, but we're
hoping to start with this niche. Certainly, mediums like SMS and perhaps a few
regional languages is one for the future.

------
iusable
@ishanagr - good job getting this out of the door. drop me a line if you want
some help porting this to mobile & native apps. free of course, india needs
random experiments like this for now.

~~~
kmiyer
I think they already have an Android app, see
<https://market.android.com/details?id=com.level2.bhrastachar>

~~~
ishanagr
Hey, thanks! Yeh we already do! We released it a while back but android market
is not that big in india.. so heres the website!

------
cggaurav
Espeically with the Jan Lokpal bill solving the problem of corruption, we need
a crowd-sourced bottom-up solution to empower the common-man to report
corruption locally.

------
utkarshsinha
Fixing piracy requires that the government officials are paid a good salary.
Would a policeman need a bribe if he can get INR 1 lakh/mo legitimately (~USD
2250/mo)?

------
ag_aditya
At times when corruption is plaguing the common man, its initiatives like
these that gives hope of some respite. Hope there is some good that results
from this!

------
grigy
I wonder how the collected data will be actually used to fight the corruption.
It's a big issue also in my country (Armenia)

------
ViditAgrawal
Looking forward to more people reporting and developing this as an active site
helping in reducing corruption

------
ankitibre
Great initiative.A lot needs to be done to tackle corruption in India.But at
least this can be a start.

------
ankimal
Where is the social integration? Gotta have the usual tweet, like, reddit etc.
to make this viral.

------
RealGeek
Also see <http://www.corruptionfight.in>

------
rajsaxena
Its a great step forward.. long way to go! Hope it turns out to be something
interesting.

------
shrikant
Also see: <http://ipaidabribe.com/>

------
lucasngoo
It's useful. I wish this is in my country (Malaysia).

------
marcusong87
this is awesome! and it's applicable to almost every country! good job!

------
cooltechplus
Would privacy be a issue?

~~~
govind201
Privacy of the person who reports? Not at all. Your details won't be released
without your approval.

------
teachtechgeek
Great initiative!

------
csantoso
Neat design!

