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Citizen Platform Exposes India's Bribery Hotspots
17 Aug
Summary
- A new website, Bribes.fyi, allows citizens to anonymously report bribe incidents.
- The platform organizes reports by department, city, and state to show corruption patterns.
- Police departments lead in reports, followed by RTO and Revenue/Land Records.
A novel, free, crowdsourced platform named Bribes.fyi has been launched, enabling Indian citizens to report instances of bribery. The website, conceived by BTech student Aryan Nishad, serves as a public repository for bribe demands and payments encountered in government offices. Reports are organized by department, city, and state, offering insights into corruption trends.
Users can anonymously submit details of bribe demands, including the department, amount, and location. The process, taking about a minute, adds reports to a searchable database with identifying information removed. At present, police departments have the highest number of reported incidents (337), followed by RTO (88) and Revenue/Land Records (69).
Bribes.fyi has recorded 616 reports from 251 cities. While it highlights reported experiences, the platform emphasizes that the data represents a self-selected sample and should not be considered a definitive measure of corruption across India. Approximately 38 percent of reported incidents were refused by citizens, with some services still being rendered.
