_I Paid a Bribe_ was launched as an India-wide online anti-corruption initiative on Aug 15, 2010—India’s Independence Day. It is the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy’s unique initiative to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. Through its innovative, crowd-sourcing model, it has already collected a ground-breaking 22,491 bribe reports, has registered more than 1.8 million unique hits and in just over two years has become the largest online repository of bribe data in the world. Its work has been recognized in international media such as the _New York Times_, by global bodies such as the United Nations, the One World Foundation and the World Bank, and by Manthan—India’s premier forum for public discourse. 

_I Paid a Bribe_ addresses India’s endemic culture of transactional (“retail”) corruption—the type that confronts ordinary citizens when availing themselves of government services. On the website, citizens report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of actual corrupt acts, providing for the first time a snapshot of bribes occurring across India’s cities. The IPAB team believes this type of corruption is the root cause of ongoing poor service provision in India, and a major impediment to the country’s development. Critically, this system of retail corruption disproportionately impacts on the poor, as it places essential services beyond their financial reach. IPAB gives citizens a platform to publicly voice their corruption experiences and share them with the media, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and concerned government departments—critical to bringing visibility and accountability to this destructive practice. Citizens across India can to access the site via the web, and on their phones through web browsers.

_I Paid a Bribe_ also helps interested NGOs in other countries start their own _ipaidabribe.com_ website. It shares its source code with interested partners and delivers ready-to-use platforms with all the requisite back-end support needed to launch. So far, replica sites have been built in Kenya, Greece and Pakistan, with conversations in progress with in a further 30 countries. The team seeks to drive the global momentum of anti-corruption crowd-sourcing sites through the Crowdsourcing Against Corruption Coalition—a community of practice conceived and administered by Janaagraha.

Links: www.ipaidabribe.com

special thanks to Joylita Saldanha, Gayatri Vijayan, Vidya Kumaraswamy.

Logo by Fisheye Creative

_I Paid a Bribe_ (IN) is an initiative of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. It was conceived by Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan and Sridar Iyengar and launched on August 15, 2010.