Three months ago those multi-million dollar scandals persuaded a 72-year-old social activist called Anna Hazare to begin a Gandhi-like fast in protest. He wanted the Indian government to write new anti-corruption legislation.

It worked, kind of.

Hazare’s fast was highly publicized and after four days the government agreed to come up with, well, something. The arguing over what that thing should actually be is still going on.

But during those four days thousands of Indians voiced their support for Hazare’s cause, especially online. Hazare trended on Twitter and Indians poured forth their anti-corruption anger on Facebook. Some saw it as a kind of citizen awakening. Others, not so much.

“I saw people tweeting,” said Aditya Kumar in Bangalore. “You know, we are with you. Anna Hazare we are with you. But my question is, what do you support? How do you support? How do you support Anna Hazare? Just by saying it?”

Aditya Kumar (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Kumar is a 29-year-old software engineer based in Bangalore. He also writes a blog about life in India.

“My point is this: if you have ever paid a bribe to a traffic cop on a red signal I don’t think you are entitled to complain about corruption in India.”

And that kind of means no-one can really complain, said Kumar. That 100 rupee, two buck bribe to the traffic cop is normal, everyday. No one thinks of it as a crime really, and the cops are hardly well-paid.

As Kumar pointed out, nobody wants to break the law. It’s not that Indians wake up in the morning intent on criminal behavior. It’s more that India’s bureaucracy is too intimidating. If you want to pay a fine the correct way, you have to claw your way through a thicket of red tape.

“So what would I rather do? This is what a typical urban youth will think: I would rather pay the same amount to the traffic cop and this way I can be let off in 60 seconds. So that’s the most common thing. Then anything that involves government, anything that involves me standing in a queue and filling a form and then getting a signature from somebody up there.”

That ‘somebody up there’ might be the one you need to bribe to sign off on your marriage certificate, or get your kid a place at school, or even release your loved one’s body to you from the local morgue.

This is retail corruption. You want it, you pay for it.

“It’s such a pain for everybody,” Kumar added.

But for many like Kumar it’s also a matter of simple accountability, whether you’re an everyday citizen or a powerful government minister.

Ramachandra Guha (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Over tea, I asked the historian Ramachandra Guha whether India had always experienced this level of corruption, at least in politics. He said no, not in the days of Gandhi and Nehru.

“What was common to Gandhi and Nehru and that entire generation of Indian politicians was that they were personally honest,” said Guha.

“They were incorruptible in a financial sense. However over the last 20 or 25 years there has been a deep nexus between big business and politics, and certain types of big businesses: real estate, mining, telecoms, defense contractors. These are the people who depend on state patronage to promote their businesses and in exchange give kickbacks to ministers. And the scale of the kickbacks is what is humungous, you know, billions of dollars.”

In other words, much of Indian politics has become transactional–you want something done, you strike a deal, for whatever it’s worth to you. Everyday bribes are no different–they’re just smaller deals.

But the current outrage, especially in the media, is directed at corruption with a big ‘C’, at those big government scandals. Aditya Kumar said that outrage alone isn’t enough.

“The government of India, the government of the state, the government of anywhere is actually us.”

This is the idea that has been missing, he said, that by tolerating the world of everyday bribes, Indian citizens are in a way complicit in the bigger scams and scandals.

Swati Ramanathan is one of the co-founders of a civil society group based in Bangalore.

“We used to take the British on the palanquins on our shoulders and now we’re taking our government. We’ve still not made that transition in our mindsets to say that we are their bosses and ultimately we are the ones that actually put the government where they are.”

Ramanathan’s group is called Janaagraha, which translates as ‘the moral force of people’. A few years back she and her colleagues asked themselves some questions about corruption.

“What is the size of corruption? What if we gave people a way by which they could report the kinds of bribes that they were having to pay?”

Swati Ramanathan

The result is a website called I Paid A Bribe.com. It invites people to submit, anonymously, their own experiences of corruption: the amount they paid, where they paid it and for what government entitlement.

One person reported paying two hundred rupees in Chandigarh to get a death certificate for his relative. Another said it took an extra 60 bucks to get his passport renewed in Hyderabad. And in Bangalore, someone paid twenty thousand rupees to register a property–a bribe of four hundred and fifty dollars. And they go much higher than that.

In all, I Paid A Bribe has collected over twelve thousand such reports. The vast majority tell of bribes paid, a few reveal spots of honesty in the system, and some are by people who actively refused to pay a bribe.

The site joins them all together, and it’s produced a wealth of crowd-sourced advice on how to deal with corrupt officials, like demanding that everything always be put in writing.

“If you’re surrounded by an entire environment that is corrupt it’s very difficult to stay honest,” said Ramanathan.

The website can help people do that, but it’s only part of the plan. The I Paid A Bribe team is able to extrapolate trends from all those stories–which cities are worse, which government departments–and then direct public attention to specific problems in the system. The thinking is that as knowledge of the site grows officials will think twice before demanding a bribe.

This graphic is only a representation of the individual stories submitted by users on the site. (Graphic courtesy: http://ipaidabribe.com/)

India is negotiating its relationship with corruption, and how to phase it out. And it’s doing it under the pressure of what Swati Ramanathan described to me as a double whammy, rapid urbanization and expectations from the rest of the world: multinationals want to expand their operations in India, but sense that corruption may be just the way of things there.

“I think it’ll take time to fix it but we’re a young democracy, we are 60 years old,” she said. “Give us another forty years and we’ll get there.”

‘We’ll get there’. That’s key for young Indians like Aditya Kumar.

“To be very honest, until a few years ago I was doing it,” he said.

“I have paid a bribe to the cops, the traffic cops. But now I’m not doing it anymore.”

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could face multiple trials if the Constitutional Court rejects the 'legitimate impediment' law (Photo: Presidenza della Repubblica)

• Is Silvio Berlusconi on His Way Out?

• BBC coverage
• On The World: China arrests four Rio Tinto employees (Aug 2009)

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  In Shanghai the trial of four executives of the Anglo-Australian mining company, Rio Tinto, ended today.  One of the defendants is Australian, the other three are Chinese.  They were accused of taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets.  The defendants admitted some of the bribery charges.  No verdict has been announced.  But whatever the outcome, this case was about more than the alleged misdeeds of four executives.  You see, Rio Tinto is a mining giant, the world’s second largest producer of iron ore.  If Rio Tinto can run afoul of the authorities, the same week that internet Google said it will pull out of China, what does all this say about how foreign businesses have to operate in China?  The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing and is here to clarify some of this.  First of all Mary Kay, what did we learn from this trial today?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  Well we haven’t learned a whole lot because in fact the trial today, which was the third day of the trial, was mostly closed.  It was about those commercial secrets.  Even diplomat from the Australian embassy weren’t allowed to go in.  But what we do know is that all four men plead guilty to some bribery charges, but they weren’t the bribery charges that had originally been thought to have been brought against them.  Back when this first came up in July, and these men were first detained, the Chinese state run media were saying that they had tried to bribe state owned enterprises, Chinese steel companies, to get state secrets and then to fix iron ore prices and make them much higher.  What these men have admitted to is that they accepted bribes from Chinese steel companies.  It’s not clear exactly what was being asked of them.  Where we’re at at the moment is that he courts have said that they’ll let the Australian government know, they’ll let everyone know when they decide that they’re going to announce a verdict.

WERMAN: So as far as the charges of stealing state secrets, apparently Chinese law makes it very difficult to know just what stealing state secrets is.

MAGISTAD: Right.  Even the contents of the state secrets law are, in part, secret.  But what’s been interesting is that the Chinese government has kind of dialed it back a bit in terms of what they’re accusing these men of.  They’re now saying that it’s theft of commercial secrets and bribery.  And it’s not at all clear whether the commercial secrets charge is going to stick.

WERMAN: So uncertainty on when the verdict might come on this trial.  It’s worth mentioning that a very high number of trials in China end up in conviction.  I didn’t know that.

MAGISTAD: Certainly the vast majority do.  The Chinese government, once it has arrested someone, it wants to be seen to be right, to have acted because it had evidence and occasionally it will back down slightly.  It maybe will have two or three charges against someone and will convict on the lesser charge and may even let someone off for time served.  But it’s very rare that they’ll let someone go free.

WERMAN: I spite of this case and this trial, Mary Kay, Rio Tinto has gone a long way to keep a good business relationship with the Chinese government.  What are they up to?

MAGISTAD: Well absolutely.  On Friday Rio Tinto announced that it had formed a joint venture with Chanelco, which is a big Chinese steel company to develop an iron ore project in Guinea, in Africa and on Monday Rio Tinto’s chief executive spoke at the China development forum here and pledged to work with China to find mineral resources in China and overseas.  Resources, mineral wealth, oil, gas, are all big businesses for Australia.  In fact some analysts in Australia have suggested that in fact Australia is becoming a little too dependent on China and on this sector in particular and that a case like this just tends to amplify what some of the dangers are of becoming too dependent in this way.

WERMAN: So Google shut down its Chinese language server on the mainland this week.  The Rio Tinto story provides another example of the unpredictability of doing business in China.  Is the international business community there worried?

MAGISTAD: There certainly had been considerable worries when the Rio Tinto case first broke in July.  There was a sharp intake of breath and a lot of foreign investors here who had been in China for a long time said look, up until this point we thought that even though the courts don’t work all that well here, we had kind of an understanding, a predictable business environment.  This was not predicted.  This was not something we thought could happen here, or would happen here and it makes us reassess, what does it mean to do business in China?

WERMAN: Mary Kay great to speak with you.  Thank you.

MAGISTAD: Thanks.  Good speaking with you too Marco.

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• BBC coverage
• Profile: Hamid Karzai

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. Hamid Karzai is about to begin another five-year term as president of Afghanistan. And today Karzai responded to calls for his government to do more about corruption. In a moment an Afghan lawmaker tells what the president’s first steps should be and who might well stand in his way. But first The World’s Matthew Bell reports on just how big a problem corruption has become for Afghans and for Washington.

MATTHEW BELL: President Karzai today described corruption as a stain on Afghanistan. He vowed to launch an anti-corruption campaign but he gave few specifics about what that means.

HAMID KARZAI: We are aware of the difficulties of our governance and the environment in which we live. We’ll keep trying our best to address the questions that we have facing Afghanistan and to make sure that the wishes of Afghan people come true towards an effective, clean government.

BELL: The truth of the matter is that Karzai’s government is far from effective or clean. In fact doing almost any official business in Afghanistan means dealing with corruption.

SARAH CHAYES: Getting a death certificate. A friend of mine whose father was actually blown up in a suicide bombing and he had to pay bribes in order to get an official death certificate.

BELL: Sarah Chayes is an American advisor to the NATO command in Afghanistan. She’s lived in Kandahar for most of the last eight years. Chayes says Afghan corruption is an entrenched system that runs up to the highest level of government.

CHAYES: It’s organized so that what we might call petty corruption on the kind of street level like the police officers who stop your vehicle and just ask for a couple of dollars. That, it’s systematized because they will pay some of that up the chain and it keeps up going up the chain until you get to the point where you know you get to the chief of police of a province and he’s actually purchased his position. So he owes a certain amount of money every month or every six months or something like that up the chain.

BELL: Chayes says people in Kandahar feel stuck. They’re threatened by the Taliban on one hand and they’re victims of government corruption on the other.

CHAYES: There’s almost no punishment for this because that’s part of the deal. The summit of the government provides protection. And it will only punish those people who actually go against the system – kind of go against the criminal enterprise. It’s really … . How to put it. It’s kind intolerable to live under because it’s just everywhere you turn and there’s no recourse against it. That’s the real problem.

BELL: To make matters worse Afghan officials are notoriously ineffective even once the bribes have been paid. South Asia expert Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations says it would be one thing if the government were corrupt but competent.

DANIEL MARKEY: Then it wouldn’t be so bad. The problem is that you have this combination of corruption and lack of capacity or lack of delivery and that’s what’s really getting people angry and alienated from their government. It’s that two-fold combination that really hollows out the legitimacy of the current Afghan state.

BELL: Markey says the Obama Administration has started to play hardball on the issue of corruption. But he says that approach toward Hamid Karzai hasn’t worked very well.

MARKEY: What that tough line has often done is pushed him away; made him feel uncomfortable, alienated, and thrown him into the arms or the laps of a variety of really unsavory characters who he feels he needs to help him get his job done in Afghanistan. And so I see a two-fold problem. He’s not a particularly strong character in the presidency and the United States’ leverage, at least its coercive leverage, has often backfired.

BELL: The administration is reported to be working on a new anti-corruption compact for the Afghan government. It would include measures such as arresting or at least cutting off some corrupt officials and local strongmen. One of them is thought to be Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who’s suspected of being involved in the drug trade. James Dobbins is a former US special envoy for Afghanistan. He says when trying to assist in ridding Afghanistan of its insurgency it’s important to keep a little history in mind.

JAMES DOBBINS: All of the countries that the United States has supported in similar circumstances since say 1950 have been to one degree or another corrupt and incompetent. If they weren’t corrupt and incompetent they wouldn’t have insurgencies to start with.

BELL: Dobbins says it’s also key to maintain realistic expectations for Afghanistan. It’s no Switzerland he says. In other words Afghanistan probably won’t be a model of clean, efficient government by western standards any time soon. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.

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Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The Mexican city of Juarez may be getting more dangerous but the Chinese city of Chongqing may be getting a little safer. At least that’s the hope of Chinese officials now that a woman described as the godmother of the underworld has been put behind bars. Xie Caiping was sentenced to 18 years today. She was said to have run gambling dens in nightclubs and tea houses and protected drug users and the court concluded that Xie bribed police to turn a blind eye to her crimes. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is monitoring the story from Beijing. This trial captivated a lot of Chinese Mary Kay. What were some of these lurid and sensational details that caught people’s attention?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well first of all there was the personality of Xie herself. You know she came into the court and cussed at the judges. And of course the judge reprimanded her. But you know the people who were watching ate it up. Then there were the totally unsubstantiated reports in some of the Chinese press that she had a stable of 16 young lovers. There’s the fact that her brother-in-law was the deputy chief of police in Chongqing and the former director of the justice department and that he seemed to have facilitated her being able to run these gambling dens. So I think part of it is just the sheer soap opera value of this sort of a trial with this sort of a woman who the Chinese media were portraying as a dragon lady. But then you have to go beyond that and ask why this trial? Because there’s a lot of corruption in China.

WERMAN: Well precisely. I mean Xie is believed to have earned more than two million yuan – or 300,000 dollars. It seems kind of like small change compared to other cases. I mean why would this draw so much attention?

MAGISTAD: Chongqing’s party secretary is Bush e Lai. He’s a very ambitious, media-savvy person who drove this anti-corruption campaign. And he’s been getting a lot of credit in the Chinese media for bringing people like Xie to justice. But I think part of why this is getting so much attention in the state-run media is that it makes the state look good. It makes the government look good. It makes Bush e Lai look good that they’re cracking down on corruption. But it doesn’t actually hurt the interest of people at very senior levels. There have been corruption cases that have been linked to family members of people at very senior levels. And if you try to do a search on the internet for stories about those cases you’ll find that your computer freezes.

WERMAN: When you hear about the mafia or underworld we have images of a certain kind of organized crime. How does the culture of the Godfather compare to what you’re talking about in Chongqing with the godmother?

MAGISTAD: Well I think she ran a much smaller racket than the Godfather of the films. You know she had something like 20 casinos. You know there certainly were some unsavory stories about things that she did in the course of running her businesses. At one point she allegedly hired thugs to beat up an undercover police officer and they ended up stuffing his body in a bag and dumping him in a field. He survived it. Another time, it was said in the court, she was tipped off that there was going to be a raid and she made off with a suitcase full of money. You know she had her ways of making things work for her. I think probably not as much murder and mayhem as in the Italian mafia and in the Godfather films. But you know she kind of tried to hold her own.

WERMAN: She’d put a horse in somebody’s bedroom. But a living horse.

MAGISTAD: [LAUGHS] Perhaps.

WERMAN: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing. Thank you so much.

MAGISTAD: Thank you Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.