Wikibribes

One reason for the astonishing success of Wikileaks has been its reliance on (mostly anonymous) sources for its content: anyone can upload a discriminating document/evidence. The document, if it passes the scrutiny of a group of reviewers, is posted at the website. The site, like other social media outlets, thus relies on crowdsourcing: its fundamental task (of reporting) is outsourced to a task.

The crowdsourcing model, despite having attracted formidable criticism, has seen other notable successes, the obvious and well-known examples being Wikipedia and the Linux operating system. The ‘wiki’ concept can thus be successfully be applied to various fields (Wikileaks has already seen several spin-offs). It was therefore only a matter of time before a ‘Wikibribes’ appeared, and given that corruption is India’s national sport, it was logical that such a site appeared out of India. It’s also fitting that the site would originate from Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka, which the Outlook magazine called ‘India’s most corrupt state’.

We are therefore pleased to welcome India’s own ‘Wikibribes’, at ipaidabribe.com, a website created by T. Raghunandan, a retired IAS officer, where we can post incidents where we were forced to pay bribes. The site has already seen more than 2600 bribery reports – some as high as 50 lakh rupees, some as low as five rupees. The bribery reports, created by ordinary people, make for disgusting reading, and confirm how deep the rots of corruption have seeped in.

While I am skeptical about whether the site could achieve anything, given how entrenched corruption is in our DNA, I laud the intent of its founder and wish the project good luck. Don’t hope for citing of scum like A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi, but do visit the site.

(ipaidabribe reference from Jason Burke).