Anti-corruption web platform "ipaidabribe.com" leverages the transparency and anonymity of the Internet to encourage private citizens in India who have been the victims of corruption to self-report details of bribes paid, including the bribe amount, the name of the corrupt official, and services rendered. The ipaidabribe.com portal then aggregates these data to create maps and charts of corrupt activities across Indian cities. The theory is that such data will build awareness and shame, raising the cost of corruption.

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ipaidabribe.com is a unique initiative to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. You can report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of actual corrupt acts on this website. Your reports will, perhaps for the first time, provide a snapshot of bribes occurring across your city. The site does not ask for your name or phone details.

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In India, there is the I Paid A Bribe crowd sourcing initiative, which was launched in August 2010 to “[encourage] people to not put up with official abuse of power and to report their stories of bribery to ‘uncover the market price of corruption'” (GV text is here).

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"An airport official at Begumpet airport held me back showing a small torn edge on my passport... He said he would let me off if I pay some money. I ended up paying him Rs 1,000 to allow me to take my flight."

These comments were posted on ipaidabribe.com and are among the thousands of accounts of the shame and humiliation people suffer when forced to pay a bribe. It could be for anything - getting driving licenses, birth or death certificates, traffic challans, property deeds, gas connections , pensions...you name it and you have to pay up.

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As is often the case for many people these days, the first time I saw the Indian version of “I Paid a Bribe” I was quite excited about it. The overarching principle is simple: if you paid a bribe, you report it (it’s more than that, but you can check it out on the website for yourself). I find these websites particularly interesting in the sense that anger and frustration (in that case having to pay a bribe) may be good drivers of action, as suggested by some political behavior research.

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With Facebook, Twitter and YouTube integration, and mapping through Ushahidi, the site is an evolution of previous bribery-tracking applications, like India's I Paid a Bribe. It doesn't publish names associated with incidents unless they can be verified by media reports.

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It is no coincidence that today the site counts more than 1 million visitors and collect over 22 000 reports in 484 cities of India. The secret of success? In addition the impatience for the corruptive phenomenon is certainly the desire for change of the majority of the Indian population plagued by incredible episodes collected and reported in the three sections " I paid a bribe "," I refused to pay "and" I did not needed to pay "where each of the pages asks the visitor to enter the type of tangent request, the amount of money paid, the date and office of extortion. The system is direct, simple, but effective.

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With ipaidabribe.com, the focus is not so much on big-ticket corruption or ‘wholesale’ corruption, but more on petty corruption – what we call ‘retail’ corruption. This is kind of corruption that confronts ordinary citizens in their daily lives when they’re not able to avail of services they are legitimately entitled to- getting a driver’s license, a birth certificate, registering a purchase of property and so on.

When Janaagraha started I Paid a Bribe the most staggering revelation was the lack of data on bribes and corruption in the country. Retail Corruption is a large and real problem in India, but there is no data on its size or range – almost all of it is shared anecdotally!

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In India, a clever use of social media led to a website called “Ipaidabribe.com,” on which people forced to pay for government services could share their experiences with each other and thus shame officials into changing their practices.

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