Poll Analysis | Understanding I Paid a Bribe
“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference” states Bess Myerson, an American politician. The primary reason why retail corruption has bolstered to unmanageable levels today is because citizens have learnt to agree to unlawful demands put forth by our government babus. More than political or bureaucratic corruption, graft that takes place at grassroots level is far more damaging to the country’s economy. The difficulty encountered while tracking corruption also worsens the situation.
I Paid a Bribe is one such website that seeks to track corruption. The website conducted a poll asking its readers, “What is your reason for not posting a report on I Paid a Bribe?” Much to our dismay, 72% of the readers don’t post reports as they don’t see tangible results by posting their experiences while 16 % of the readers are of the opinion that anonymous bribe reporting is of no good. The remaining 12% have never had to pay bribes.
Readers are often under the impression that posting their experiences or queries on the website will yield immediate response and results. But I Paid a Bribe functions more as a record of graft reports that will eventually help us in understanding the system in which corruption breeds. Such data help us to gauge the bribe amount that is in circulation in the market. As of October of 2012, the maximum number of reports received by the website, related to the Police Department, have been 3900 amounting up to Rs. 1,43,10,839 across major metros. The dynamics also include to understand bribe-prone junctions in the processes of a government transaction. This has helped us to include a solution-based section on ‘How-To’ that mainly focusses to demystify government procedures.
I Paid a Bribe was established with a pragmatic ideology that the problem of retail corruption is endemic and it cannot be resolved overnight. The primary intention of anonymous posting is to avoid false defamatory content from miring names of individuals, whether or not they hold a good standing in the society. As iterated earlier, reports on our site are merely a record of public’s experiences. The possibility of false reports naming innocent individuals or officers is completely avoided by this.
It is the ideology of curbing corruption that drives ipaidabribe.com. Data collected from bribe reports helps to closely understand the dynamics of retail corruption and hence seeks to bring systemic and policy changes.