Protest bribes: Buying services with a zero-dollar bill
This is one of the best initiatives I’ve seen in a long time. Anybody who has spent any time in the developing world, knows that corruption is a big problem. And the people who suffer most from it are the poor and the powerless, who pay a crippling amount of bribes for things you and I take for granted. In India, one group thinks it has found the solution: The Zero Rupee Note.
The idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative.
It turns out a banknote with no value can buy a lot of good.
One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.
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In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.
<SNIP>
For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system. Once they realize that they are not alone, they also realize that this battle is not unbeatable.
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Hi Stephan, just to let you know: the Dutch minister for foreign affairs Maxime Verhagen just commented on your blogpost: http://twitter.com/MaximeVerhagen/statuses/8274191993
In translation: “Nice fun way to protest against bribes, this is. But the Afghans will profit more from real measures against corruption. And that’s what we will be discussing in London.”
(today and tomorrow all foreign affairs ministers of NATO-countries will be in London to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and Yemen)
Thanks Bart. It’s too bad though that Verhagen doesn’t see this as a “real measure.” Corruption is at its base a social norm, and you’re not going to eradicate without tackling it from that direction. This looks like one of the best ways I’ve seen.
In response to another comment. See in context »agree.
In response to another comment. See in context »This is an incredible idea to a seemingly intractable problem. Thanks for the find, Stephen.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this made it to the States. Given Wall Street’s dominance of both political parties, I can think of a few mega-banks I’d like to mail some zero notes to.