Shame, the Virtual Weapon
A Web site works wonders in the fight against corruption
by Sudip Mazumdar, Newsweek, Feb 21 '00

One of the web sites generating the most buzz in India these days is--surprise--not about shopping, job openings or pornography. It's about shame. Late last month cvc.nic.in--the Web site of a small government department known as the Central Vigilance Commission--posted a seemingly innocuous list of the names of 88 top bureaucrats and police officials. The catch: the document recommended that each of the officials be punished for acts of corruption big and small. For most Indians, who watch in helpless silence as corruption permeates almost every sphere of public life, the list was the rarest of things--a beam of light shining into the dark recesses of government misdeeds. The CVC's Web site suddenly began getting hundreds of hits every day--not just from curious citizens, but also from officials praying not to see their own names. "Corruption is a low-risk, high-profit business in India," says commission chief Nagarajan Vittal, who came up with the idea of posting the list. "I want to raise the risk."

Vittal has done that, and more. In the past three weeks his bold strikes against corruption have emboldened a bribe-weary public, galvanized government agencies and struck fear--and sometimes indignation--into the hearts of Indian bureaucrats. How have a 62-year-old former civil servant and a little Web site set off such a chain reaction? Part of it is Vittal's missionary zeal. But even more important is his target: corruption is a growing scourge that now touches nearly everybody in India, from the bribes poor citizens pay to get a food-rationing card to the millions of dollars allegedly paid in kickbacks for military purchases. In a 1998 "corruption perception survey," Berlin-based Transparency International ranked India near the bottom--66th out of 85 countries--making graft a source of national disgrace.

India's "corruption buster" has no qualms about using public exposure as a weapon. Nor, apparently, does his boss, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who last October called for a campaign of "zero tolerance" against corruption. When Vajpayee appointed Vittal as CVC chief in 1998--soon after Vittal retired from a long and, by all accounts, upstanding career as a civil servant--the commission had already been churning out reports for 34 years. They fingered corrupt officials and recommended punishments ranging from demotion and dismissal to criminal prosecution. Only problem: no action was taken. While the reports piled up, corrupt officials kept stealing with impunity. "There is tribalism among the corrupt," says Vittal. "Public servants protect each other."

That shield of protection has started to crack. Vittal dealt the first blow by posting the list of "tainted" officials on the Web site. A week later, as if taking a cue from him, federal investigators raided the home and office of a top Delhi police official. The man's official salary was about $410 a month, but investigators found nearly half a million dollars' worth of cash, jewelry and property--and evidence of overseas trips to Asia, Europe and the United States. (The official was unavailable for comment.) Delhi's police commissioner, Ajay Raj Sharma, described the raid as a "black day for the Delhi police," but he hoped it would act as a "deterrent" against corruption. Later that week federal investigators arrested and began prosecuting seven more officials, including men from the customs and income-tax departments.

As the raids progressed, Vittal was flooded with e-mail messages--most of them congratulatory, but some critical. A handful of Indian bureaucrats have attacked him, though none publicly, for seeking "cheap publicity." Others accuse him of trying to take the law into his own hands, committing the sin of bureaucratic overreaching. One official whose name is on the list says he has been unjustly accused and is considering suing Vittal for defamation. Vittal, a mild-mannered man with a penchant for philosophy and vegetarian food, seems unfazed. He did apologize to the widow of one official who, though long dead, was included on the list. And he conceded that another miscreant was not properly identified, which caused consternation for someone else with the same name. But Vittal says he is simply posting documents that are already in the public domain, and he has no plans to slow down. He is now scrutinizing the names of an additional 2,000 officials that may soon appear on the Web site. "The vicious cycle of corruption can be broken by public transparency," says Vittal. "I want people to be empowered to fight corruption."

The little guys are already flexing their muscles. In one recent case, a real-estate agent in West Delhi complained about an electricity worker who offered to reduce his monthly bill by tampering with the meter--in return for a $350 bribe. Government officials laid a trap, arrested the worker and found a small fortune at his house. In January a group of customs-house agents asked Vittal what to do about the bribes they had to pay to clear consignments at various ports and airports. Vittal encouraged them to just say no. A few days later the Bombay Customs House Agents Association, along with similar groups in six other cities, made resolutions not to pay bribes to customs officials--and warned members against breaking the rule. Customs officials called the resolutions a "vile and unsubstantiated" campaign.

Vittal has also found no shortage of converts in government. The chief minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, now wants to display the names of corrupt local officials on the state's official Web site--as does Delhi's local government. Defense Minister George Fernandes was so impressed that he asked Vittal to review all defense contracts from 1985 onward to see whether middlemen skimmed huge kickbacks from the deals. (India spends $2.5 billion a year on military hardware, but some of it seems less than economical; for example, a hexagonal screw that costs 40 cents locally has been imported at $354 each.)

The courts are also cracking down. Last week India's Supreme Court ordered the prosecution of three government officials, proclaiming: "The socioeconomic-political system would crumble if corruption was not nipped in the bud." Last week a judge in the southern city of Chennai (formerly Madras) sentenced former chief minister J. Jayalalitha to one year in prison on corruption charges--a decision she has appealed. The next day, in a separate case, prosecutors opened up one of Jayalalitha's suitcases to show that, despite taking a symbolic salary, she owned jewelry worth more than $1 million. Among the pieces: a gold waistband embedded with nine rubies, 18 emeralds and 2,389 diamonds.

Ill-gotten wealth so angers Vittal that he seems incapable of letting a single corrupt official off the hook. In one of his latest investigations, he found that the head of a state-run company--a man set to retire on Feb. 2--had amassed wealth "disproportionate to his known sources of income." (The official was unavailable for comment.) Vittal persuaded the government to sack the executive--just four days before his retirement date. It might seem a Pyrrhic victory, but Vittal was sending a message to corrupt officials: they are never safe. Even if they don't believe him, they would be wise to log on to the CVC Web site--and start checking for their names.

Newsweek International