

Indian Official Puts Public Webcam in Government office - wicknicks
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/global/in-india-an-official-puts-a-webcam-in-office.html

======
rrrazdan
The point is that its not any official but a Chief Minister( akin to Governor
in the US) that is doing this. The message that he is putting across to all
other Government officials is much more important than us being able to see if
he is slacking off or not.

~~~
bdhe
I think this is to score political brownie points, but it still an interesting
idea. It comes in the wake of what has been a very eventful year in India
against corruption[1] which included fasts by a prominent social activist to
pass India's first ombudsman bill[2].

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Indian_anti-
corruption_mov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Indian_anti-
corruption_movement)

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill>

~~~
jk-in
This is no political gimmick. I am from Kerala, where Oommen Chandy is CM, and
can quite understand what he is trying to achieve. Mr. Chandy is a straight
forward and no non-sense person who speaks his mind. And he has created enough
enemies in doing so. Now there are quite a lot of people who blame him for
corruption for no reason. This is his way to put an end to such blame game;
way easier than denying all allegations against him.

------
badclient
Reminds me of when my friend got flagged by a cop and him being in a rush,
just slowed down enough to pass a cash bill to the cop. The cop refused and
asked my bud to pull over. When my friend asked what the problem was, cop goes
"you wanna show this(bribing) to entire Mumbai? crazy guy." He proceeded to
give my buddy a handshake through which money was passed.

------
tdrgabi
It's just a trick to boost his "anti corruption" image, I presume.

You don't get bribes in the office, in a clear, visible way. It's sent through
intermediaries, persons he trust. And even if you want to pay him in the
office, which is never done, you could slip the money among papers or in so
many ways which are not caught on camera.

I don't understand what we should expect to see. A person who offers a big
pack of money or a suitcase filled with dollars?

~~~
kakashi_
You don't get the whole point of it.

In India, it is known that officials in the government slack during office
hours. Delaying of process for unworthy reasons. Numerous time-breaks and
other infinite 'small' but aggregatively deterrent forms of behaviours in the
office.

The camera moves the whole system a step forward. Transparency is more easily
perceivable to the public now. The necessity of a sting operation in the
office does not emerge. People can have a fresh perspective on the laws for
the government officials.

Psychologically, this might build a better work environment. It has been shown
that adding monitoring video cameras does add a certain form of placebo
effect.

I hope the 'mantra' should be improvement, no matter how small it is. A
complete revamp of the system is more like dreaming about humans taking over
all the nine(eight eh?) planets, and that too in an year.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
"In India, it is known that officials in the government slack during office
hours."

It's been known to happen in North America too. :)

~~~
digamber_kamat
The corruption in India is a bit different. If you need a electricity
connection for you home you need to pay a bribe. If you need water connection
more bribe. If you want to run a hotel you need to take 375 permission and for
each you have to pay a bribe (all these 375 permission need to be renewed
every year, well most of them). Even the poorest people who live less than $2
per day have to pay a bribe to get a certificate that says they are poor
enabling them to take benefit of various social security schemes.

------
luigi
Posting an official record of visitor logs, like what the White House
currently does (though imperfectly), would probably be more useful than a
webcam.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
room/disclosures/visitor-...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
room/disclosures/visitor-records)

~~~
ruchi
It may not be since it leaves interpretation of intention of the visit up to
you. With the webcam, although the feed may be muted, you could still find out
more.

------
digamber_kamat
A more important step would be to make each and every communication between
government officials public on their respective website. A letter written, a
order passed, a note on the file. Government officials generally scan and put
the documents as PDF which makes it difficult to search.

~~~
paraschopra
On top of that, we would also require some kind of automated technology to
scan through these public data (reports, documents, videos, etc.) and detect
anomalies. Without such automated detection, at the rate any govt. produces
data, manual detection would be very slow and it would be improbable to catch
corrupt deals.

~~~
ramchip
I'm not sure I understand how a program could be made that scans through
reports and videos and reports possible instances of corruption, at least
without a few huge steps forwards in AI and image processing.

~~~
digamber_kamat
The problem is a challenge but worth solving.

------
johnx123-up
OT: Google says it is 8:15pm in India, but still people working there.

~~~
swapsmagic
you know Indians are hard workers :) [It's 12:50 am here right now]

------
goombastic
Gimmicks. The same guy is releasing a corrupt ex-minister from jail citing age
as an issue. The minster spent maybe 40 days in jail after being sentenced to
an year of imprisonment on corruption charges. You watch Indian politics for a
while you get fed up.

------
digamber_kamat
As if the corrupt deals happen in the Office. Generally CMs have agents who
meet you in pub and get the deals fixed.

------
bxc
although there's more to the story, the headline itself sounds so 1990s. (soon
you'll even be able to order pizza online!)

------
known
Black/corrupt/illegal money in foreign banks is coming back to India via
Hawala/FDI/FII/NRI/PIO investments. This money is used to create jobs in the
economy. Your anti-corrupt agitation will not create new jobs in India.

~~~
swombat
Are you seriously attempting to suggest that the Indian government should
embrace corruption as a natural state of things?

Are you seriously using the possible threat of lost jobs as a foundation for
this argument?

~~~
known
Yes

